Côte d'Ivoire

Côte d'Ivoire (English pronunciation: /ˌkoʊt diˈvwɑr/; French: [kot diˈvwaʀ]), (officially the Republic of Côte d'Ivoire), is a country in West Africa. Although it is commonly known in English as the Ivory Coast, the Ivorian government officially discourages this usage, preferring the French name Côte d'Ivoire to be used in all languages. Côte d'Ivoire has an area of 322,462 km², and borders the countries of Liberia, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso and Ghana; its southern boundary is along the Gulf of Guinea. The country's population, which was 15,366,672 in 1998,^[5] is estimated to be 18,373,060 in 2008.^[2]

Additional info

1 E11 m²

To help compare orders of magnitude of different geographical regions we list here surface areas between 100,000 km² and 1,000,000 km². See also areas of other orders of magnitude.

2004 French–Ivorian clashes

A clash between the armed forces of Côte d'Ivoire and French peacekeepers took place on 6 November 2004. This involved an Ivorian air attack on French soldiers of Operation Licorne in the North of Côte d'Ivoire, after which the French military responded swiftly by destroying the entire Ivorian Air Force. Those incidents were followed by massive anti-French protests in Côte d'Ivoire. It was the most serious crisis between France and its former colony since independence in 1960.^[1]

AIDS

AIDS: Acquired immune deficiency syndrome
HIV: Human immunodeficiency virus
CD4+: CD4+ T helper cells
CCR5: Chemokine (C-C motif) receptor 5
CDC: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
WHO: World Health Organization
PCP: Pneumocystis pneumonia
TB: Tuberculosis
MTCT: Mother-to-child transmission
HAART: Highly active antiretroviral therapy
STI/STD: Sexually transmitted infection/disease

Abidjan

Abidjan is the economic and former official capital of Côte d'Ivoire (the current capital is Yamoussoukro). It is the largest city in the nation, and the third largest French speaking city in the world. It has, according to the authorities of the country in 2006, 5,068,858 residents in the metropolitan area and 3,796,677 residents in the municipality. Only Lagos, the former capital of Nigeria has a larger number of inhabitants in this region. Considered a cultural hub of West Africa or Africa, Abidjan in the 21st century is characterized by high industrialization and urbanization. The city stands in Ébrié Lagoon on several converging peninsulas and islands, connected by bridges.

Adamawa-Ubangi languages

The Adamawa-Ubangi languages are spoken in Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, the Central African Republic, Cameroon, Gabon, the Republic of the Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Sudan, by a total of about 12 million people. The family was established by Joseph Greenberg in The Languages of Africa under the name Adamawa-Eastern as a primary branch of the Niger-Congo family, and itself divided in two branches, Adamawa (e.g. Niellim) and Ubangian (e.g. Sango, an Ubangian-based creole). Their closest affiliation is widely believed to be with the Gur languages, and the unity of the Adamawa branch is also frequently questioned. The linguist Roger Blench replaced Adamawa-Ubangi with a Savannas family, which includes Gur, Ubangian, and the various branches of Adamawa as primary nodes.

Afghanistan

The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan is a landlocked country in South-Central Asia. It is variously described as being located within Central Asia,^[5]^[6] South Asia,^[7]^[8] or the Middle East.^[9] It is bordered by Iran in the west, Pakistan in the south and east, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in the north, and China in the far northeast.

Africa

Africa is the world's second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² (11.7 million sq mi) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area.^[2] With a billion people (as of 2009, see table) in 61 territories, it accounts for about 14.72% of the World's human population. The continent is surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, both the Suez Canal and the Red Sea along the Sinai Peninsula to the northeast, the Indian Ocean to the southeast, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west. Not counting the disputed territory of Western Sahara, there are 53 countries, including Madagascar and various island groups, associated with the continent.

Agriculture

Agriculture is the production of food and goods through farming and forestry. Agriculture was the key development that led to the rise of human civilization, with the husbandry of domesticated animals and plants (i.e. crops) creating food surpluses that enabled the development of more densely populated and stratified societies. The study of agriculture is known as agricultural science.

Agriculture in Côte d'Ivoire

Agriculture was the foundation of the economy in Côte d'Ivoire and its main source of growth. In 1987 the agricultural sector contributed 35 percent of the country's GDP and 66 percent of its export revenues, provided employment for about two-thirds of the national work force, and generated substantial revenues despite the drop in coffee and cocoa prices. From 1965 to 1980, agricultural GDP grew by an average 4.6 percent per year. Growth of agricultural GDP from coffee, cocoa, and timber production, which totaled nearly 50 percent of Côte d'Ivoire's export revenues, averaged 7 percent a year from 1965 to 1980.^[1]

Alassane Ouattara

Alassane Dramane Ouattara (born 1 January 1942) is an Ivorian politician who was Prime Minister of Côte d'Ivoire from November 1990 to December 1993.^[1]^[2] He is currently the President of the Rally of the Republicans (RDR), a party which has its support base in the north of the country, and is a candidate in the upcoming 2009 presidential election. Besides being a politician he is also a technocrat, trained as an economist and having worked for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO).

Albania

Albania

/ælˈbeɪniə/ (help·info) (Albanian: Shqipëri/Shqipëria, Gheg Albanian: Shqipnia or Shqypnia), officially the Republic of Albania (Albanian: Republika e Shqipërisë, pronounced [ɾɛpuˈblika ɛ ʃcipəˈɾiːs]), is a Mediterranean country in South Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Montenegro to the northwest, Kosovo^[a] to the northeast, Macedonia to the east and Greece to the south and southeast. It has a coast on the Adriatic Sea to the west, and on the Ionian Sea to the southwest. It is less than 72 km (45 mi) from Italy, across the Strait of Otranto which links the Adriatic Sea to the Ionian Sea.

Albert Adu Boahen

Albert Kwadwo Adu Boahen (May 24, 1932 – May 24, 2006) was a Ghanaian academic, historian, and politician. He was an academic at the University of Ghana from 1959 to 1990, since 1971 as a professor. As a politician, he notably was a candidate in the 1992, representing the then main opposition New Patriotic Party.

Algeria

Algeria (Formal Arabic: الجزائر, al-Jazā’ir; ), officially the People's Republic of Algeria, is a country located in North Africa. In terms of land area, it is the largest country on the Mediterranean Sea, the second largest on the African continent^[6] and the Arab world after Sudan, and the eleventh-largest country in the world.^[7]

Andorra

Andorra

/ænˈdɒrə/ (help·info), officially the Principality of Andorra (Catalan: Principat d'Andorra), also called the Principality of the Valleys of Andorra,^[4] is a small country in southwestern Europe, located in the eastern Pyrenees mountains and bordered by Spain and France. It is the sixth smallest nation in Europe having an area of 468 km² (181 sq mi) and an estimated population of 84,484 in 2008. Its capital is Andorra la Vella. The official language is Catalan, although Spanish, French, and Portuguese are also commonly spoken.

Angola

Angola, officially the Republic of Angola (Portuguese: República de Angola, pronounced [ʁɛˈpublikɐ dɨ ɐ̃ˈɡɔlɐ]; Kongo: Repubilika ya Ngola), is a country in south-central Africa bordered by Namibia on the south, Democratic Republic of the Congo on the north, and Zambia on the east; its west coast is on the Atlantic Ocean. The exclave province of Cabinda has a border with the Republic of the Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Animist

Animism (from Latin anima "soul, life")^[1]^[2] is a philosophical, religious or spiritual idea that souls or spirits exist not only in humans but also in other animals, plants, rocks, natural phenomena such as thunder, geographic features such as mountains or rivers, or other entities of the natural environment.^[3] Animism may further attribute souls to abstract concepts such as words, true names or metaphors in mythology. Animism is particularly widely found in the religions of indigenous peoples,^[4] although it is also found in Shinto, and some forms of Hinduism and Neopaganism.

Arab League

ISO 4217 codes bracketed:
Algerian dinar (DZB)
Bahraini dinar (BHD)
Comorian franc (KMF)
Djiboutian franc (DJF)
Egyptian pound (EGP)
Iraqi dinar (IQD)
Jordanian dinar (JD)
Kuwaiti dinar (KWD)
Lebanese livre (LL, LBP)
Libyan dinar (LYD)
Mauritanian ouguiya (MRO)
Moroccan dirham (MAD)
Omani rial (OMR)
Qatari riyal (QAR)
Saudi riyal (SAR)
Somali shilling (SOS)
Sudanese pound (SDD)
Syrian pound (SYP)
Tunisian dinar (TND)
United Arab Emirates dirham (AED)

Area

Area is a quantity expressing the two-dimensional size of a defined part of a surface, typically a region bounded by a closed curve. The term surface area refers to the total area of the exposed surface of a 3-dimensional solid, such as the sum of the areas of the exposed sides of a polyhedron. Area is an important invariant in the differential geometry of surfaces.^[1]

Argentina

Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic (Spanish: República Argentina, pronounced [reˈpuβlika aɾxenˈtina]), is the second largest country in South America, constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires. It is the eighth-largest country in the world by land area and the largest among Spanish-speaking nations, though Mexico, Colombia and Spain are more populous.

Armand Colin

Armand Colin is a historically important French publishing house created in 1870 by Auguste Armand Colin. It quickly became the principal publisher in the world of education, including higher education, with works for students and faculty in the human sciences, economics and education. Armand Colin remained dominant in these areas through the beginning of the 20th century.

Armenia

Armenia

/ɑrˈmiːniə/ (help·info) (Armenian: Հայաստան, transliterated: Hayastan, IPA: [hɑjɑsˈtɑn]), officially the Republic of Armenia (Հայաստանի Հանրապետություն, Hayastani Hanrapetut’yun, [hɑjɑstɑˈni hɑnɾɑpɛtuˈtʰjun]), is a landlocked mountainous country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Situated at the juncture of Western Asia and Eastern Europe,^[8] it is bordered by Turkey to the west, Georgia to the north, the de facto independent Nagorno-Karabakh Republic and Azerbaijan to the east, and Iran and the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan to the south.

Ashanti

Ashanti, or Asante, are a major ethnic group of Ashanti Region in Ghana. They are an Akan people who speak Twi, an Akan language similar to Fante. For the Ashanti (Asante) Empire see Asanteman.

Atlantic-Congo languages

In the classification of African languages, Atlantic-Congo constitutes the core of the Niger-Congo family, with the noun class systems stereotypical of Niger-Congo. It comprises all of Niger-Congo but Mande, Dogon, Ijoid, and part of Kordofanian. Mukarovsky's West-Nigritic corresponded roughly to modern Atlantic-Congo.

Atlantic Ocean

The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about 106.4 million square kilometres (41.1 million square miles), it covers approximately one-fifth of the Earth's surface and about one-quarter of its water surface area. The first part of its name refers to the Atlas of Greek mythology, making the Atlantic the "Sea of Atlas". The oldest known mention of this name is contained in The Histories of Herodotus around 450 BCE (I 202); see also: Atlas Mountains. Another name historically used was the ancient term Ethiopic Ocean, derived from Ethiopia, whose name was sometimes used as a synonym for all of Africa and thus for the ocean. Before Europeans discovered other oceans, the term "ocean" itself was to them synonymous with the waters beyond Western Europe that we now know as the Atlantic and which the Greeks had believed to be a gigantic river encircling the world; see Oceanus.

Atlantic languages

The Atlantic or West Atlantic languages^[1] of West Africa are a proposed major group of Niger-Congo language family. The Atlantic languages are highly diverse and have never been demonstrated to form a unified group, so that linguists such as Dimmendahl and Blench treat them as three independent branches of Niger-Congo.

Austria

Austria

/ˈɔːstriə/ (help·info) (German:

Österreich (help·info)), officially the Republic of Austria (German:

Republik Österreich), is a landlocked country of roughly 8.3 million people^[3] in Central Europe. It borders Germany and the Czech Republic to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west. The territory of Austria covers 83,872 square kilometres (32,383 sq mi), and is influenced by a temperate and alpine climate. Austria's terrain is highly mountainous due to the presence of the Alps; only 32% of the country is below 500 metres (1,640 ft), and its highest point is 3,797 metres (12,457 ft).^[6] The majority of the population speaks German,^[7] which is also the country's official language.^[1] Other local official languages are Croatian, Hungarian and Slovene.^[6]

Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan (pronounced /ˌæzərbaɪˈdʒɑːn/ (

listen); Azerbaijani: Azərbaycan), formally the Republic of Azerbaijan (Azerbaijani: Azərbaycan Respublikası), is a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Eastern Europe and Western Asia,^[4] it is bounded by the Caspian Sea to the east, Russia to the north, Georgia to the northwest, Armenia to the west, and Iran to the south. The exclave of Nakhichevan is bounded by Armenia to the north and east, Iran to the south and west, while having a short borderline with Turkey to the northwest. The Nagorno-Karabakh region in the southwest of Azerbaijan proper declared itself independent from Azerbaijan in 1991, but it is not recognized by any nation and considered a legal part of Azerbaijan.

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation, usually referred to by its abbreviation as the "BBC",^[1] is the longest established and largest broadcaster in the world.^[2] The BBC is a publicly owned corporation that operates under a Royal Charter issued by the British Crown and its operations are overseen by twelve Governors who are appointed by the Crown on the advice of the Government.^[3] It is funded principally by an annual television licence fee, which is charged to all United Kingdom households, companies and organisations using equipment capable of recording and/or receiving live television broadcasts ^[4]; the level of the fee is set by the UK Government and agreed by the UK Parliament under a multi-year agreement with the Corporation.

BBC News

BBC News is the department of the BBC responsible for news and current affairs output. The world's largest broadcast news organisation,^[1] it generates each day about 120 hours of radio and television, as well as online news coverage.^[2] The service maintains 44 foreign news bureaux and has correspondents in almost all the world's 240 countries.

Background Notes

The Background Notes series is a collection of works by the United States Department of State. These publications include facts about the land, people, history, government, political conditions, economy, and foreign relations of independent states, some dependencies, and areas of special sovereignty. The series is available online through the State Department's website.

Bahrain

Bahrain, officially Kingdom of Bahrain (Arabic: مملكة البحرين‎, Mamlakat al-Baḥrayn, literally: "Kingdom of the Two Seas"), is a small island country in the Persian Gulf ruled by the Al Khalifa royal family. Saudi Arabia lies to the west and is connected to Bahrain via the King Fahd Causeway, which was officially opened on 25 November 1986. Qatar is to the southeast across the Gulf of Bahrain.

Bambara language

Bambara, also known as Bamanankan in the language itself (literally "the language of the Bamanan"), is a language spoken in Mali by as many as six million people (including second language users). The Bambara language is the mother tongue of the Bambara ethnic group, numbering about 2,700,000 people, but serves also as a lingua franca in Mali (it is estimated that about 80% of the population speaks it as a first or second language). It is an SOV language and has two tones.

Banana

Banana is the common name for herbaceous plants of the genus Musa and for the fruit they produce. They are native to the tropical region of Southeast Asia, and are likely to have been first domesticated in Papua New Guinea.^[1] Today, they are cultivated throughout the tropics.^[2]

Bantu languages

The Bantu languages (technically Narrow Bantu languages) constitute a grouping belonging to the Niger-Congo family. This grouping is deep down in the genealogical tree of the Bantoid grouping, which in turn is deep down in the Niger-Congo tree. By one estimate, there are 513 languages in the Bantu grouping, 681 languages in Bantoid, and 1,514 in Niger-Congo.^[1] Bantu languages are spoken largely east and south of the present day country of Nigeria; i.e., in the regions commonly known as central Africa, east Africa, and southern Africa. Parts of this Bantu chunk of Africa also have languages from outside the Niger-Congo family (see map).

Baoulé

The Baoulé (or Baule) is one of the largest groups in the Ivory Coast. The Baoulé are farmers who live in the eastern side of Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast). The Baoule people are represented by religion, art, festivals, and equal society . There are more than sixty-five different Akan-speaking ethnic groups living in Cote d'Ivoire. They live essentially in the middle of the Cote d'Ivoire between the Comoé River and the Bandama River. They played a role during 20th century history.

Basic Books

Basic Books is a book publisher founded in 1952 and located in New York. It publishes books in the fields of psychology, philosophy, economics, science, politics, sociology, current affairs, and history.

Begho

Begho (also Bighu or Bitu) was an ancient trading town located just south of the Black Volta at the transitional zone between the forest and savanna (present-day Ghana, north-western Brong-Ahafo region). The town was of considerable importance as an entrepot frequented by northern caravans from around 1100 AD until its abandonment in the 18th century. Goods traded included ivory, salt, leather, gold, kola nuts, cloth, and copper alloys. Today, there is a village called Hani located in the vicinity of the Begho site.

Belgium

The Kingdom of Belgium

/ˈbɛldʒəm/ (help·info) is a country in northwest Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts its headquarters, as well as those of other major international organizations, including NATO.^[5] Belgium covers an area of 30,528 square kilometres (11,787 sq mi) and has a population of about 10.7 million.

Benin

Benin (pronounced [beh-NIN]), officially the Republic of Benin, is a country in West Africa. It borders Togo to the west, Nigeria to the east and Burkina Faso and Niger to the north; its short coastline to the south leads to the Bight of Benin.

Benue-Congo languages

The Benue-Congo group of languages constitutes the largest branch of the Niger-Congo language family, both in terms of sheer number of languages, of which Ethnologue (2009) counts 900, and in terms of speakers, numbering perhaps 500 million. Within Niger-Congo, Benue-Congo is a branch of Atlantic-Congo, and perhaps also Volta-Congo if that turns out to be a valid group. When it was first proposed by Joseph Greenberg (1963) it included the Volta-Niger languages; the boundary with those languages and with Kwa has been repeatedly debated.

Bondoukou

Bondoukou (var. Bonduku, Bontuku) is one of the fifty-eight departments of Côte d'Ivoire, located in the Zanzan Region, 420 km Northeast of Abidjan.^[2] The administrative center and largest town of the Department is Bondoukou, while other towns include Bandolé, Boudouye and Tanbi.