Land Conflicts in Côte D’Ivoire in 1990s as a Premise for the Civil War

After 1960, Ivory Coast became a growing West African economy attracting labor migration from neighboring countries to the national cash crop cocoa industry (40% of the global production). Growth depended on new arable land cleared from tropical rainforests. Labor migrants settled in the southern Ivory Coast where cocoa was grown and found employment in that industry with the same land use rights as the autochthons. Nevertheless, in 1980s and 1990s, global cocoa prices dropped, targeting the Ivorian population economically. Now more cocoa and arable land were required to sustain the livelihood of autochthons and migrants alike while the potential to acquire new arable land was nearly exhausted, aggravating the issue of land use rights. For the lack of formal private land ownership, arable lands were communally distributed by frequently overlapping authorities with multiple disputes consequently arising. Cash crop production decline contributed to intensified clashes over land claims between the autochthons and the migrants whose discrimination deteriorated on all levels. In 1998, a new Land Law encouraged by the World Bank was adopted but never put to practice before September 2002 when a civil war erupted over the aforementioned ethnic rivalries. Its implementation failed because it lacked mechanisms of recognizing the communal ownership rights and successfully resolving inter- and intracommunal disputes. Thus the land rights problem largely ignited the Ivorian civil war, and although the conflict is over, it remains unsolved, undermining the economic and political stability of the state.