Discover Abidjan : A mythical capital

Under the leadership of the "Old Father of the Nation", Félix Houphouët-Boigny, the city experienced a fabulous destiny, a dazzling development for which nothing predestined it. A colonial capital from the turn of the century until the late 1980s, the "Pearl of the Lagoons" embodied the ideal dream of a proud black megalopolis, a crossroads where all ambitions and dreams could be realized. World-class hotels, mythical nightclubs, recording studios on a par with those in London, Paris or New York, film shoots and lounging, feet in the sand during the day, lulled by the ebb and flow of clear waves breaking on heavenly beaches. A look back at the history of a capital nicknamed "Africa's Little Manhattan", which is now recovering from so many years of crisis to revive its flourishing past.

Originally, an Ebrié village on the lagoon

The Dictionnaire encyclopédique de la Côte d'Ivoire reports that, according to Ebrié oral tradition, the name Abidjan (formerly Abijean) was born of a misunderstanding. At the time, explorers, soldiers, mission captains and topographers were criss-crossing the region. An explorer came across an old man in the forest, loaded down with branches, and asked him in French for the name of the place they were visiting. The old man, who didn't speak the colonial language, was impressed by the strange white man and certainly convinced that he had to justify his presence in the area. He ran off shouting: "N'tchan m'bidjan! n'tchan m'bidjan!", which in Ebrié means: "I've just come back from cutting leaves! The explorer then carefully recorded the distorted exclamation in his notebook, declaring in his report that the village was called Abidjan. The legend is not without its charm, but it seems that the reality is more complex: Abidjan is in fact the name of the "country of the Bidjan", a branch of the Tchaman ethnic group, "the chosen ones", before the arrival of the first settlers. The Ébrié lagoon owes its name to the fact that, deriding the superiority of their lagoon neighbors who claimed to be the chosen people, the Abouré of Moossou replaced the term Tchaman withÉbrié, which in their language means "dirty people". This term was later adopted by the colonial administration, which extended its use to the name of the lagoon. The Tchaman call it N'Doupé: "the lagoon with warm water".

The choice of Abidjan as future capital

As early as 1897, the chronic insalubrity of Grand-Bassam and the almost endemic nature of the yellow fever epidemics there led the colonial administration to consider transferring the colony's capital to a more suitable location. Two sites were considered: Drewin (now Sassandra) and Abidjan-Santè (or Santey). In the end, the latter was chosen as it offered more space and opportunities for commercial expansion, and had the advantage of being close to Grand-Bassam, the economic heart of the young colony despite its hostile terrain. It was also the most suitable location for the creation of an inland port and a rail link across the territory. On August 30, 1899, the Ministry formalized its intention to make Abidjan the definitive capital of Côte d'Ivoire, and until the colony was equipped with all the infrastructure required for a lasting settlement, the capital was temporarily established at Bingerville. The colony thus found itself with three capitals for the price of one: the economic one (Bassam), the transitional one (Bingerville) and the future one.

The first urban developments

Construction work on the railway and the port began in 1904, but the digging of the Vridi canal (a channel in the sandy strip separating the sea from the lagoon to link the inland port), slowed down by repeated silting, gave the administration a hard time and seriously called into question Abidjan's status as future capital. While Bingerville boasted a number of natural resources that justified settlers moving there permanently (sand and stone quarries, numerous sources of drinking water, higher altitude than Abidjan-Santè, etc.), Grand-Bassam, which had just been cleaned up, offered the advantages of an excellent network of waterways, a wharf (completed in 1901) and the installation of new administrative services. These assets prompted some settlers to call for the town's return to favor, while Governor Angoulvant and CFAO representative Louis Barthe supported the decision to make Bingerville the colony's new capital. Urban development in Abidjan began as early as 1903, with the construction of the railroad. The Tchaman villages occupying the site of today's Plateau were relocated to allow for the gradual establishment of services and commercial enterprises on this median strip, which gradually became a white city, "protected" from the native settlements to the south by the Ébrié lagoon, to the east and west by the Banco and Cocody bays, and to the north by the Mangin and Gallieni military camps (now the Palais de Justice).

The transfer of the capital from Bingerville to Abidjan

In 1912, the commander of the cercle des lagunes, who until then had always been based in Bassam, transferred his residence there. From 1920 onwards, the decision to make Abidjan the capital of Côte d'Ivoire accelerated the construction of public buildings, while in 1927, with the opening of the Port-Bouët wharf (linked to the railway in 1931), the young capital outdid Grand-Bassam once and for all. It became a key point for the distribution of European products to the interior of the country, aided by the dynamism of its growing Lebanese community.
In 1928, the first urban development plan was published. In 1931, Plateau and Treichville, then a working-class town, were linked by a floating metal bridge (replaced in 1957 by the Félix Houphouët-Boigny bridge). In 1933, the main administrative, social and religious buildings were completed, and Abidjan was made the colony's capital by decree on August 10, 1933.
Abidjan received its definitive status on July^1, 1934: "Daughter of iron, which brings it all the riches of the Eburné and Voltaic lands, and daughter of the sea, which the Vridi canal has given it, Abidjan occupies a pleasant and predestined site. The pioneers of the Houdaille mission, who chose this lagoon peninsula in 1893, were truly men of extraordinary prescience. In turn, Grand-Bassam and Bingerville, doomed by their location, had to bow to the newcomer. Abidjan deserves to be the capital, and the future will confirm more and more the success of this promotion" (Alphonse Couson, Abidjan, la perle des lagunes, in Les Capitales du monde, Éditions encyclopédiques européennes).

A phenomenal expansion from 1950 onwards

At the time, the city's development was based on a rigorous bipartition of space, with Adjamé's indigenous neighborhoods, mainly workers, surrounding the train station, and Treichville's diverse communities, grouped according to ethnic affinities, on the one hand, welcoming sub-regional residents seeking employment in the booming city. On the other, the Plateau with its settlers. Relations between whites and blacks were strictly professional. The whites themselves, still relatively isolated, would gather to chat and exchange ideas at the Grand Hôtel and the Bardon (formerly the Hôtel du Parc, now occupied by the eponymous shopping mall), the first air-conditioned hotel in French-speaking Africa, whose imposing architecture was intended as a token of the modernity and superiority of the young capital. In 1950, the city's development, slowed down after the years of World War II, reached a second high point with the completion of the Vridi canal, inaugurated by a certain François Mitterrand, then Minister of Overseas France.

In January 1951, the deep-water port of Abidjan was inaugurated, with quays finally able to accommodate deep-draft ships. The official installation of the Court of Appeal in Abidjan in December 1954 marked the end of the transfer operations from Grand-Bassam.
The completion, in 1955, of the 1,150 kilometers of railroad line linking Abidjan to Ouagadougou, serving a hinterland generously provided by nature and developed by hard-working people, definitively established the supremacy of the new capital. It seemed that nothing could stop the economic development of the country, France's proud showcase in French-speaking Africa, whose population tripled between 1950 and 1959.

The post-independence architectural verticality

Galvanized by the exemplary growth of the post-independence period (1960-1980), this "Little Manhattan of the Tropics" gradually adorned itself with attributes as sumptuous as they were imposing: the towers of the Cité administrative, the Cité financière and its dome in the shape of a pyrographed peule gourd, the Alpha 2 000 building with its leaning arcades and the Tour Postel 2001.... Independence also altered the city's social structure: the Plateau, a former colonial "enclave", became an exclusively affluent administrative, political and financial center, home to the headquarters of major corporations. To the south of Treichville, along the industrial estates stretching towards the airport and the beaches, housing estates for Europeans and middle-class Abidjanites developed, while Cocody became the headquarters of the embassies and a prestigious residential district, as epitomized by the luxurious Hôtel Ivoire, which had nothing to envy of international-class hotels and even boasted a skating rink. The African neighborhoods, on the other hand, remain largely unchanged: vast areas of squatter settlements, to which migrants from the sub-region continue to flock, particularly around Port-Bouët. The urban area of Abidjan originally comprised six communes: Abobo, Adjamé, Attécoubé, Cocody, Koumassi, Marcory, Plateau, Port-Bouët, Treichville and Yopougon. In view of the pollution and settlement problems facing the Pearl of the Lagoons from 1999 onwards, it became the Autonomous District of Abidjan (DAA) in 2002, incorporating the three sub-prefectures of Anyama, Bingerville and Songon.

To find out more: see the documentary film "Abidjan, quand la ville se révèle" by Edgar Goran and Agnès Ribouton (2017).