Yamoussoukro
2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: African Geography
The District of Yamoussoukro is the official capital city of Côte d'Ivoire. A city of 200,659 inhabitants as of 2005, and located 240 kilometers north of Abidjan on rolling hills and plains, the municipality covers 3,500 km² (1,351.3 mi²) and is coterminous with the Department of the same name. The Department and municipality is further split into four sub-prefectures: Attiégouakro, Didiévi, Tié- diékro and the Commune of Yamoussoukro, which contain 169 villages and hamlets.
The current governor of district is N'Dri Koffi Apollinaire.
History
Colonial period history
Chief Yamousso, the niece of Kouassi N'Go, ran the village of N'Gokro at the time of French colonization. The village then comprised 475 inhabitants, and was one of 129 Akoué villages.
Diplomatic and commercial relations were then established but, in 1909, on the orders of the Chief of Djamlabo, the Akoué revolted against the administration. Bonzi station, seven kilometers from Yamoussoukro on the Bouaflé road, was set on fire, and the French administrator, Simon Maurice, was spared only by the intervention of Kouassi N'Go. This respected former leader persuaded the Akoué not to wage a war which could only have turned into a disaster.
As the situation returned to normal, Simon Maurice, judging that Bonzi had become unsafe, decided to transfer the French military station to Yamoussoukro, where the French Administration built a pyramid to the memory of Kouassi N'Go, Chief of the Akoué, and in homage to Yamousso, N'Gokro was renamed Yamoussoukro.
In 1919, the civil station of Yamoussoukro was removed, and Félix Houphouët-Boigny became the leader of the village in 1939. A long period was passed where Yamoussoukro, small agricultural town, remained in the shadows, until after the war, when it saw the creation of the African Agricultural Trade Union, and first conferences of its Chief. But it was only with Independence that Yamoussoukro finally started to rise.
History since independence
After 1964, the President Félix Houphouët-Boigny made ambitious plans and started to build. One day in 1965, later called the Great Lesson of Yamoussoukro, he visited the plantations with the leaders of the county, inviting them to transpose to their own villages the efforts and agricultural achievements of the region. On July 21, 1977, Houphouët offered its plantations to the State.
In March 1983, Yamoussoukro became the political and administrative capital of Côte d'Ivoire, after, in one century, Grand-Bassam (1893), Bingerville (1900) and Abidjan (1933). The majority of economic activity still takes place in Abidjan.
Highlights
Yamoussoukro is also the site of what is claimed to be largest Christian place of worship on Earth: The Basilica of Our Lady of Peace of Yamoussoukro, consecrated by Pope John Paul II on September 10, 1990.
Also noteworthy are the Kossou Dam, the Félix Houphouët-Boigny Foundation, the PDCI-GDR House, the various schools of the Félix-Houphouët-Boigny-Boigny Polytechnic Institute, the international airport (with an average of six hundred passengers and 36 flights in 1995, it is the only airport in Africa that can accommodate the Concorde), the Town Hall, the Protestant Temple, the Mosque, and the Palace of Hosts.
On November 6, 2004, Yamoussoukro Airport was attacked by French infantry after military aircraft from the airport bombed a UN peacekeeper base as well as rebel targets and 9 French peacekeepers and one U.S. civilian were killed. Two Ivory Coast Sukhoi Su-25 aircraft and several Mil Mi-24 helicopters were destroyed, which was most of the country's air forces. Mobs and rebels tried to attack the French forces after the airport raid.