Ivory Coast
French, the official language, is taught in schools and serves as a lingua franca in the country. An estimated 70 languages are spoken in Ivory Coast. One of the most common is Dyula, which acts as a trade language, as well as a language commonly spoken by the Muslim population.
First Ivorian Civil War
Then, the large number of foreigners in Ivory Coast, and Ivorians of somewhat recent foreign descent, created an important issue of voting rights. Twenty-six percent of the population was of foreign origin, particularly from Burkina Faso, a poorer country to the north. Many of these had been Ivorian citizens for two generations or more, and some of them, of Mandinka heritage, can be considered native to the northern part of what is now known as Ivory Coast. These ethnic tensions had been suppressed under the strong leadership of Houphouët-Boigny, but surfaced after his death. The term "Ivoirity", originally coined by Henri Konan Bédié to denote the common "cultural" identity of all those living in Ivory Coast came to be used by nationalist and xenophobic politics and press to represent solely the population of the southeastern portion of the country, particularly Abidjan.