Population numbers: 20.32 million
How many square miles: 124,504 square miles
Geography fast facts (uniqueness):
- Ivory Coast is the world’s leading producer of cocoa beans, supplying 33 per cent of the total.
- The Basilica of Our Lady of Peace in The Ivory Coast capital of Yamoussoukro is the largest church building in the world covering 323,000 sq ft.
- Ivory Coast has only ever won one Olympic medal: a silver in the men’s 400 metres in 1984.
- Queen Abla Pokou is the legendary founder of the Ivory Coast and is said to have led the Baoulé people there from Ghana in the mid-18th century. She is said to have sacrificed her own child to river spirits to lead them across the Comoé River.
- Ivory Coast footballer Didier Drogba scores 13 million hits on Google. President Alassane Ouattara has 613,000.
- The trade in ivory which gave the country its name had almost died out by the 18th century.
- Côte d’Ivoire (which is the country’s preferred name for itself) is an anagram of “erotic video”.
- The Ivory Coast national football team is nicknamed “Les Eléphants” (the elephants).
- They have twice won the Africa Cup of Nations, in 1995 and 2015, both times beating Ghana on penalties in the final.
Capital City: Yamoussoukro is the political capital and administrative capital city of Ivory Coast and an autonomous district of the country. As of the 2014 preliminary census, the district had a population of 355,573 inhabitants.
Religion: Most Ivoirians practice local religions, which are sometimes infused with elements ofChristianity or Islam, or both. Government estimates in the 1980s suggested that about one-fourth of the population was Muslim, and one-eighth, Christian–mostlyRoman Catholic.
