Ferkessédougou (often shortened to Ferké) is a city in northern

Ivory Coast Ivory Coast, also known as Côte d'Ivoire and officially the Republic of Côte d'Ivoire, is a country on the southern coast of West Africa. Its capital city of Yamoussoukro is located in the centre of the country, while its largest List of ci ...

. It is a

sub-prefecture A subprefecture is an administrative division of a country that is below prefecture or province. Albania There are twelve Albanian counties or prefectures, each of which is divided into several districts, sometimes translated as subprefectures. ...

of and the seat of

Ferkessédougou Department Ferkessédougou Department is a Departments of Ivory Coast, department of Tchologo Region in Savanes District, Ivory Coast. In 2021, its population was 190,141 and its seat is the settlement of Ferkessédougou. The sub-prefectures of Ivory Coast, s ...

. It is also the seat of Tchologo Region in

Savanes District Savanes District (, , " Savannahs") is one of fourteen administrative districts of Ivory Coast Ivory Coast, also known as Côte d'Ivoire and officially the Republic of Côte d'Ivoire, is a country on the southern coast of West Africa. It ...

and a commune. Ferkessédougou is the second-most populous city in northern Ivory Coast, after Korhogo.

Regional center

Ferkessédougou is an important centre of local development as the nearest large town on the north–south road to the main border posts for crossing into

Burkina Faso Burkina Faso is a landlocked country in West Africa, bordered by Mali to the northwest, Niger to the northeast, Benin to the southeast, Togo and Ghana to the south, and Ivory Coast to the southwest. It covers an area of 274,223 km2 (105,87 ...

and

Mali Mali, officially the Republic of Mali, is a landlocked country in West Africa. It is the List of African countries by area, eighth-largest country in Africa, with an area of over . The country is bordered to the north by Algeria, to the east b ...

. A major transport crossroads, it is home to a regional

market Market is a term used to describe concepts such as: *Market (economics), system in which parties engage in transactions according to supply and demand *Market economy *Marketplace, a physical marketplace or public market *Marketing, the act of sat ...

, schools, and a

hospital A hospital is a healthcare institution providing patient treatment with specialized Medical Science, health science and auxiliary healthcare staff and medical equipment. The best-known type of hospital is the general hospital, which typically ...

Local economy

The economy of the Ferkessédougou area is overwhelmingly agricultural, with larger scale commercial farming based on huge

cotton Cotton (), first recorded in ancient India, is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus '' Gossypium'' in the mallow family Malvaceae. The fiber is almost pure ...

and

sugarcane Sugarcane or sugar cane is a species of tall, Perennial plant, perennial grass (in the genus ''Saccharum'', tribe Andropogoneae) that is used for sugar Sugar industry, production. The plants are 2–6 m (6–20 ft) tall with stout, jointed, fib ...

plantations. The city is a centre for the processing of these commodities, in particular for cattle feed, as it is a centre for stockyards of herds of

zebu The zebu (; ''Bos indicus''), also known as indicine cattle and humped cattle, is a species or subspecies of Bos taurus, domestic cattle originating in South Asia. Zebu, like many Sanga cattle breeds, differs from taurine cattle by a fatty hump ...

cattle, driven from the north, and bound for markets further south. A burgeoning tourist industry is based upon Ferkessédougou's proximity to the large Comoé National Park (to the east) and

Mount Nimba Strict Nature Reserve Mount Nimba Strict Nature Reserve () is a protected area and UNESCO World Heritage Site located in both Guinea and Côte d'Ivoire, extending over a total of area of , with in Guinea, and in Côte d'Ivoire. The reserve covers significant portion ...

(to the west).

Population and culture

The dominant ethnic group in the area are the Sénoufo (primarily of Nyarafolo and Kpalaga/Palaka dialect speakers). Sociocultural organization is based on the " Poro", an educational system through which every male adolescent graduates to adulthood. In the 2021 census, the population of the sub-prefecture of Ferkessédougou was 160,267.

History

Ferkessédougou is situated in the heartland of the

Senufo people The Senufo people, also known as Siena, Senefo, Sene, Senoufo, and Syénambélé, are a West African ethnolinguistic group. They consist of diverse subgroups living in a region spanning the northern Ivory Coast, the southeastern Mali and the west ...

, who migrated from the north at the time of the

Mali Empire The Mali Empire (Manding languages, Manding: ''Mandé''Ki-Zerbo, Joseph: ''UNESCO General History of Africa, Vol. IV, Abridged Edition: Africa from the Twelfth to the Sixteenth Century'', p. 57. University of California Press, 1997. or ''Manden ...

. The Senufo followed traditional African faiths, while many of the

Mandinka people The Mandinka or Malinke are a West African ethnic group primarily found in southern Mali, The Gambia, southern Senegal and eastern Guinea. Numbering about 11 million, they are the largest subgroup of the Mandé peoples and one of the List of ethn ...

were becoming fervent

Muslims Muslims () are people who adhere to Islam, a Monotheism, monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God ...

. The Senufo were soon followed by the Dioula or Jula, a Mandinka merchant class prominent throughout

West Africa West Africa, also known as Western Africa, is the westernmost region of Africa. The United Nations geoscheme for Africa#Western Africa, United Nations defines Western Africa as the 16 countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Gha ...

. The Dioula, as they are called in Ivory Coast, reached the area and settled the nearby city of Kong in the 12th century. Despite being outnumbered by the Senufo, they prospered as traders and advisors in much of the region. In the 18th century, the

Kong Empire The Kong Empire (1710–1898), also known as the Wattara Empire or Ouattara Empire for its founder Seku Watara, was a pre-colonial state centered in what is now northeastern Ivory Coast that also encompassed much of present-day Burkina Faso a ...

to the east became a major regional power and dominated the Ferkessédougou area. The town of Ferkessédougou was founded in the 19th century by Ferkessé, a Niarafola leader pushed to the west by the expansion of the Kong Empire.Mundt (1987), p.68 The name is a contraction of ''Ferkessé''s - ''dougou'' ("Village" in Bambara). At the end of the 19th century, the area fell under the control of first

Samory Touré Samori Ture ( – June 2, 1900), also known as Samori Toure, Samory Touré, or Almamy Samore Lafiya Toure, was a Mandinka people, Malinke and a Soninke people, Soninke Muslim cleric, military strategist, and founder of the Wassoulou Empire, an Is ...

Wassoulou Empire The Samorian state, also referred to as the Wassoulou empire, Ouassalou empire, Mandinka empire or Samory's empire, was a short-lived West African state that existed from roughly 1878 until 1898, although dates vary from source to source. It span ...

and the

French colonial empire The French colonial empire () comprised the overseas Colony, colonies, protectorates, and League of Nations mandate, mandate territories that came under French rule from the 16th century onward. A distinction is generally made between the "Firs ...

. Placed under the Côte d'Ivoire Colony of

French West Africa French West Africa (, ) was a federation of eight French colonial empires#Second French colonial empire, French colonial territories in West Africa: Colonial Mauritania, Mauritania, French Senegal, Senegal, French Sudan (now Mali), French Guin ...

in 1895, the completed section of the planned Abidjan-Niger Railway was constructed north and ended during the colonial period at Ferkessédougou town, lending it increased regional importance. The French introduced large-scale cotton production, which remains an important pillar of the local economy. In the late 1970s, Ferkessédougou was designated by the government as one of their regional development hubs for industry processing agricultural goods. A 50,000 ton capacity sugar processing plant was built in this period.

Climate

On the southern edge of the

Sahel The Sahel region (; ), or Sahelian acacia savanna, is a Biogeography, biogeographical region in Africa. It is the Ecotone, transition zone between the more humid Sudanian savannas to its south and the drier Sahara to the north. The Sahel has a ...

— tropical Savanna belt, Ferkessédougou gets a mean annual rainfall of 1400 mm, making it drier than much of Côte d'Ivoire.B. Badu-Apraku and A. Menkir. Registration of 16 Extra-Early Maturing Striga Resistant Tropical Maize Inbred Lines. Crop Sci 46:1400-1401 (2006). It is 1037 ft-316 m in elevation.

Transport

Ferkessédougou is served by Ferkessédougou Airport and a station on the national railway system.

Villages

The 41 villages of the sub-prefecture of Ferkessédougou and their population in 2014 are.

References

* Robert J. Mundt. Historical Dictionary of the Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire). Scarecrow Press/ Metuchen. NJ - London (1987) {{DEFAULTSORT:Ferkessedougou Sub-prefectures of Tchologo Communes of Tchologo Regional capitals of Ivory Coast