Abidjan city, southeastern Côte d'Ivoire, de facto capital, chief seaport, and largest city of the country. It is built on several converging peninsulas and islands, connected by bridges, in Ébrié Lagoon. Its modern port was opened in 1950, when the Vridi Canal was cut through a sandbar, linking the sheltered and relatively deep lagoon with the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean. Exports include coffee, cacao, timber, bananas, pineapples, and palm and fish products. Manufacturing, which has greatly expanded since the 1960s, includes vehicle and radio assembly and the production of textiles, metal products, clothing, foodstuffs, plastic, rubber, and petroleum products; tourism is of increasing importance. The city is the hub of the national road system and the terminus of the Abidjan-Niger Railway, which extends north into Burkina Faso.
Abidjan is an attractive, largely modern city with parks and broad boulevards. Districts include Cocody, an elegant residential area to the east of the modern business district, and to the south, on Petit-Bassam Island, Treichville, with its large traditional market. Abidjan is the seat of the National University of Côte d'Ivoire (1958) and several technical colleges and libraries; the national museum here contains collections of Ivorian art. Banco National Park, a forested area, lies north of the city. Abidjan was a small village in 1904, when it became the terminus of a railroad to the interior; it had no port facilities, however, and growth was slow. In 1934 it succeeded Bingerville as the capital of the then French colony of Côte d'Ivoire, a position it retained after the colony gained independence in 1960. Although Yamoussoukro was named the administrative capital in 1983, Abidjan remains the center of the nation's cultural and commercial life. Population 1,929,079 (1988).
