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Bas-Sassandra District - Ivory Coast

Added: Sun 24 May 2020 - 18:01 | Updated: Tue 12 Oct 2021 - 11:54 | 2K+

Une vue du lac de Buyo (source : rezoivoire.net)

Bas-Sassandra is a district of Côte d'Ivoire composed of the regions of Gbôklé, Nawa and San-Pédro.

Located in the south-west of Côte d'Ivoire, where it borders Liberia, the Bas-Sassandra District covers a total area of 28,095 km2 for a population of nearly 2.3 million inhabitants in 2014.

The Bas-Sassandra District is distinguished by its rich natural resources. With its extensive hydrographic network, tropical coastal landscape, hot and humid climate and fertile soil, the territory allows for a wide range of industrial production (coffee, cocoa, rubber and oil palm) and food production (rice, cassava, maize, yams, plantain and vegetables).

Agriculture thus plays a key role in the District's economy and in the subsistence of the population.

In terms of industrial production, the growth of crops in the District has been particularly driven by the development of cocoa plantations since the 1980s. However, the increase in cultivated areas has been at the expense of the forest, which has undergone accelerated destruction over the same period.

Demographic growth and the disappearance of the forest have led to a decline in available space and to serious land conflicts. At the same time, the area under export crops and the number of farmers increased by an average of 4% per year between 2000 and 2008.

Conflicts have mainly pitted Ivorians against foreigners, but also indigenous Ivorians against allochthones (Bauls in general) and have predominated around the departments of Soubré, San Pedro and Tabou, where cocoa production and allochthones farmer populations are the most important.

The District also has significant tourism potential, which is currently in decline due to the lack of rehabilitation and the state of the roads, particularly in terms of beach tourism, ecotourism, cultural tourism, sports tourism, business tourism and agrotourism. It also has a large number of accommodation facilities with 23% of the national accommodation capacity in 2008.

Long sparsely populated, the Bas-Sassandra District experienced a strong acceleration in the 1970s as part of a vast development programme under the aegis of a state structure, the ARSO (Authority for the Development of the South West Region). The government decided to open roads, build bridges and create the port of San Pedro, which would turn the town into a regional capital and serve as a catalyst for sub-regional development. The growth rates of the cities became the highest in the country and related activities (trade, industry, services) developed rapidly.

However, despite its territorial characteristics, local facilities and basic infrastructure (electricity, water, health, education) have not kept pace with population growth. They are concentrated in the perimeter of the agro-industrial blocks and in the towns, so that most rural areas suffer from under-equipment. After these years of crisis, the Bas-Sassandra District must now, in order to continue its role as the locomotive of yesteryear, which led it to become the world's leading cocoa export port, it must address the following issues:

A solution to the land problem and the social conflicts that have agitated the District for over ten years;
A rehabilitation of the road infrastructure, particularly those linking San Pedro to Abidjan (the port plays an essential role in the development of the District and of a more global hinterland on a national scale);
Socio-economic development that takes advantage of the human potential, agricultural, mining and tourist resources.