Flag of Ivory Coast

What the flag of Ivory Coast looks like

The flag of Ivory Coast (officially Côte d'Ivoire) has three vertical bands of equal width: orange at the hoist, white in the middle and green at the fly. The proportions are 2:3. There is no emblem or text on it.

It is a plain tricolor in the style of the French flag, which is natural for a former French colony. The Ivory Coast flag emoji, 🇨🇮, shows the same three stripes.

Ivory Coast flag meaning and symbolism

The colors are linked to the country's land and people. Orange represents the savanna of the north and, in some accounts, the land's fertility and the country's energy. White represents peace and the unity of the country. Green represents the forests of the south, and the hope for the future.

These explanations are traditional rather than set out in detail by law. The joining of the savanna in the north with the forest in the south is a theme in many descriptions of the flag.

History of the Ivory Coast flag

Ivory Coast was part of French West Africa and used the French tricolor under colonial rule. In 1958 it became a self-governing republic within the French Community, and the current flag was adopted on 3 December 1959, while the country was still within the community. Full independence came on 7 August 1960, with Félix Houphouët-Boigny as the first president, and the flag was kept unchanged.

The design drew on the French pattern of vertical stripes and used colors that stand for the geography of the country, rather than the French red, white and blue. The flag has not changed since 1959.

The country is called Côte d'Ivoire, French for Coast of Ivory, a name that comes from the ivory trade on the coast in earlier centuries. In 1986 the government asked that the French name be used in all languages, though Ivory Coast remains common in English.

Ivory Coast flag vs Ireland flag

The Ivorian flag is often confused with the flag of Ireland, which is green, white and orange. The order is reversed: Ivory Coast has orange at the hoist and green at the fly, and Ireland has green at the hoist and orange at the fly. The other difference is the proportions, 2:3 for Ivory Coast and 1:2 for Ireland.

The similarity is a coincidence. The Irish tricolor was first flown in 1848 and stands for the union of Catholic (green) and Protestant (orange) traditions, and it became the official flag in the 1937 constitution. The Ivorian flag came later, in 1959, with a different meaning. A third flag, Niger, has orange, white and green in horizontal stripes with an orange circle.