Côte d'Ivoire Emigration and Immigration

Online Sources

 * ANOM, French Overseas Civil Registration: Ivory Coast

National Archives of the Ivory Coast
Directeur des Archives Nationales de Côte d’Ivoire (Ministère d’Etat, Ministère de l’Intérieur et de la Sécurité) BPV 123 Abidjan Côte d’Ivoire Telephone: 00225 07 93 13 5900225 07 93 13 59 Fax: 00225 20 21 75 78 border problems (2 EE 12 to 2 EE 13)
 * Website
 * Files relating to the immigration and emigration of native populations and with the natives of the colonies
 * 1) - Report on the indigenous families who left the country of Kong after the passage of the bands of Samory. 1903.
 * 2) - File on the native French subjects retained in the Spanish and Portuguese islands of the Gulf of Benin. 1914.
 * 3) - File relating to the exodus of the Agnis in Gold Coast and the events of Half-Assinie. 1917.
 * 4) - Letter addressed to the civil affairs service in Dakar about the return of the emigrants from Assinie. 1918.
 * 5) - Notes on the migratory movements of Liberians in French territory. 1918 - 1919.
 * 6) - Nominative states of the cantons in which the natives of Haut-Sassandra had taken refuge. 1920.
 * 7) - Correspondence exchanged between the Governor of Côte d'Ivoire and the Governor of the Gold Coast colony concerning the settlement of

various affairs of interest to the 2 colonies. 1895, 1918 - 1925. (LAC).
 * 13) - Pass register. 1908-1910

Finding the Town of Origin in Ivory Coast
If you are using emigration/immigration records to find the name of your ancestors' town in Ivory Coast, see Ivory Coast Finding Town of Origin for additional research strategies.

Ivory Coast Emigration and Immigration
"Emigration" means moving out of a country. "Immigration" means moving into a country. Emigration and immigration sources list the names of people leaving (emigrating) or arriving (immigrating) in the country. These sources may be passenger lists, permissions to emigrate, or records of passports issued. The information in these records may include the emigrants’ names, ages, occupations, destinations, and places of origin or birthplaces. Sometimes they also show family groups.

Immigration into Ivory Coast

 * Compared to neighboring Ghana, Ivory Coast, though practicing slavery and slave raiding, suffered little from the slave trade. European slave and merchant ships preferred other areas along the coast.
 * A French mission was established in 1637 at Assinie near the border with the Gold Coast (now Ghana). Assinie's survival was precarious, however; the French were not firmly established in Ivory Coast until the mid-19th century.
 * In 1843–4, France signed treaties with the kings of the Grand Bassam and Assinie regions, making their territories a French protectorate. French explorers, missionaries, trading companies, and soldiers gradually extended the area under French control inland from the lagoon region.
 * In the 1840s, the French concluded a series of treaties with local West African chiefs that enabled the French to build fortified posts along the Gulf of Guinea to serve as permanent trading centers. The first posts in Ivory Coast included one at Assinie and another at Grand Bassam, which became the colony's first capital.
 * By the end of the 1880s, France had established control over the coastal regions of Ivory Coast, and in 1889 Britain recognized French sovereignty in the area.
 * France's main goal was to stimulate the production of exports. Coffee, cocoa, and palm oil crops were soon planted along the coast. Ivory Coast stood out as the only West African country with a sizeable population of European settlers. As a result, French citizens owned one-third of the cocoa, coffee, and banana plantations and adopted the local forced-labour system.
 * Throughout the early years of French rule, French military contingents were sent inland to establish new posts.oirians.
 * At independence (1960), the country was easily French West Africa's most prosperous, contributing over 40% of the region's total exports. When Houphouët-Boigny became the first president, his government gave farmers good prices for their products to further stimulate production, which was further boosted by a significant immigration of workers from surrounding countries.
 * In other African nations, the people drove out the Europeans following independence, but in Ivory Coast, they poured in. The French community grew from only 30,000 prior to independence to 60,000 in 1980, most of them teachers, managers, and advisors. About 20% of the population (about 3.4 million) consists of workers from neighboring Liberia, Burkina Faso, and Guinea.
 * Immigrant ethnic groups in 2004 included 100,000 Lebanese and 45,000 French.
 * Today, About 4% of the population is of non-African ancestry. Many are French, Lebanese, Vietnamese and Spanish citizens, as well as evangelical missionaries from the United States and Canada. Aside from French nationals, native-born descendants of French settlers who arrived during the country's colonial period are present.

Emigration From Ivory Coast
The table below shows the number of people born in Ivory Coast who have migrated to the 38 OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries only (the table only includes communities consisting of at least 1,000 members).
 * France	63,441
 * United States 7,595
 * Italy 7,242
 * United Kingdom 2,794
 * Canada 1,865
 * Belgium 1,363
 * Switzerland 1,100

Records of Ivory Coast Emigrants in Their Destination Nations

 * United States Emigration and Immigration
 * Canada Emigration and Immigration
 * France Emigration and Immigration
 * Italy Emigration and Immigration
 * England Emigration and Immigration
 * Scotland Emigration and Immigration
 * Belgium Emigration and Immigration
 * Switzerland Emigration and Immigration