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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Ivory Coast
Index
Population density increased steadily from twenty-one
inhabitants per square kilometer in 1975 to thirty-two in
1987.
This national average masked uneven distribution, however,
with
much of the population concentrated in the south and fewer
than ten
inhabitants per square kilometer in parts of the north.
The
southwestern corner of the country presented a low-density
exception to this pattern. Population distribution
reflected
Ivoirian history more than physical environment. Most
areas of high
density corresponded to the first centers of settlement by
major
ethnic groups, especially the Akan and Mandé, altered in
the north
by nineteenth-century conquests by Samori Touré
(see Pre-European Period
, ch. 1). Colonial policy moved villages nearer
transportation routes in order to control the population
and to
provide a ready labor supply. In the late 1980s, the
population was
still distributed along main roads as the result of
resettlements,
which had continued into the 1930s in the southwest.
Ivoirian settlement patterns in the late 1980s also
revealed
continued southward migration from the savanna to the
forest, a
process first set in motion by precolonial invasions from
the north
and continued by colonial policies emphasizing cash crop
and
plantation agriculture. This migration pattern was aided
by
postindependence urban and industrial development, which
took place
primarily in the southeast.
Data as of November 1988
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