Ivory Coast Political History. Art, Culture, Ethnic groups and Settlement. Central-West Côte d'Ivoire is a lush agricultural landscape, stuffed with rich banana, rice, and cocoa fields. The region is this West African nation's equivalent of the corn belt of Iowa and Illinois. A long drive down stretches of road left pockmarked by the ongoing rainy season yields endless repetitions of the same scene: Tiny villages each home to only a few dozen farmers living in thatched-roof huts quietly tending to crops and livestock. Things are even more peaceful than usual now, as the Muslims that make up this area's dominant religious affiliation celebrate Ramadan. But as you arrive in Yamoussoukro, the nation's capital, a strange monument can be seen towering over the horizon: An enormous gilded cross that adorns the top of what is, by many accounts, the world's largest church. Topping St. Peter's Basilica in Rome by more than 80 feet, Basilica Our Lady of Peace in Yamoussoukro, sometimes called the "basilica in the bush," is a jaw-dropping and bizarre monument to the end of a period only a few decades ago when Côte d'Ivoire was competing against other newly-independent African nations to become the cultural and economic powerhouse of the continent
