History of Ivory Coast - Independence

Independence

In December 1958, Ivory Coast became an autonomous republic within the French Community as a result of a referendum that brought community status to all members of the old Federation of French West Africa except Guinea, which had voted against association. On 11 July 1960 France agreed to Ivory Coast becoming fully independent. Ivory Coast became independent on 7 August 1960, and permitted its community membership to lapse. It established the commercial city Abidjan as its capital.

Ivory Coast's contemporary political history is closely associated with the career of Félix Houphouët-Boigny, President of the republic and leader of the Parti Démocratique de la Ivory Coast (PDCI) until his death on December 7, 1993. He was one of the founders of the Rassemblement Démocratique Africain (RDA), the leading pre-independence inter-territorial political party for all of the French West African territories except Mauritania.

Houphouët-Boigny first came to political prominence in 1944 as founder of the Syndicat Agricole Africain, an organization that won improved conditions for African farmers and formed a nucleus for the PDCI. After World War II, he was elected by a narrow margin to the first Constituent Assembly. Representing Ivory Coast in the French National Assembly from 1946 to 1959, he devoted much of his effort to inter-territorial political organization and further amelioration of labor conditions. After his thirteen-year service in the French National Assembly, including almost three years as a minister in the French Government, he became Ivory Coast's first prime minister in April 1959, and the following year was elected its first president.

In May 1959, Houphouët-Boigny reinforced his position as a dominant figure in West Africa by leading Ivory Coast, Niger, Upper Volta (Burkina), and Dahomey (Benin) into the Council of the Entente, a regional organization promoting economic development. He maintained that the road to African solidarity was through step-by-step economic and political cooperation, recognizing the principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs of other African states.

Houphouët-Boigny was considerably more conservative than most African leaders of the post-colonial period, maintaining close ties to the west and rejecting the leftist and anti-western stance of many leaders at the time. This contributed to the country's economic and political stability.

The first multiparty presidential elections were held in October 1990 and Houphouët-Boigny won convincingly.