Cote d'Ivoire

REGION: West Africa
CAPITAL CITY: Yamoussoukro
POPULATION: 17,872,000
LAND AREA: The size of New Mexico

For the first three decades after independence, Cote d'Ivoire (or, Ivory Coast) was viewed as a model of stability and developed economically into one of tropical Africa's most prosperous countries. During the 1990s, Cote d'Ivoire received thousands of refugees from the Liberian civil war. Late in that same decade, internal strife erupted as well. A peace agreement took effect in 2003. Today, however, ethnic and religious tensions — between Muslims in the north and other Ivorians in the south — remain high, and human and economic development has suffered as a result. Cote d'Ivoire is the world's leading cocoa producer (neighboring Ghana is the second-leading producer of cocoa); in addition, it is among the largest producers and exporters of coffee and palm oil. Nearly 70 percent of the Ivorian people are engaged in agriculture and related activities. Deforestation has become a major ecological problem: most of the country's forests, once among the largest in West Africa, have been heavily logged.