Currency in Ivory Coast: Communaute Financiere Africaine franc (XOF); note - responsible authority is the Central Bank of the West African States.
Ivory Coast is administratively reorganised into twelve districts plus two district-level autonomous cites. The districts were further divided into 31 regions, then sub-divided into departments and sub-prefectures.
During Medieval times, the region that is now Ivory Coast was at the centre of several major African trade routes, linking the empires which then existed in Ghana and Mali. European traders had been present in the region since the 15th century, but it was not until the 19th that the French undertook a determined penetration of the region.