Pays d'Afrique tropicale, la Côte d’Ivoire est à vocation essentiellement agricole, et malgré l'essor de sa jeune industrie, son économie externe est encore basée sur l’exportation des grands produits tropicaux: café - cacao - banane - bois - palmistes qui représentent en valeur 94% de son commerce.

The rate of increase of agricultural production, and especially food production, in Africa appears to have slowed down in the last few years. For 1959/60, the latest season for which data are available, provisional estimates indicate that there was a slight fall in production from the level of the previous year. On a per caput basis, food production appears to have fallen below the prewar level for the last three years.