Coffee plants were introduced into the country in the 19th century by French colonizers.
[5] After Ivory Coast became independent (in 1960), coffee production peaked in the 1970s making it the third-largest coffee-producing country in the world, after Brazil and Colombia, before the civil war unsettled cultivation.
[1] Coffee production and policy are derived from the era when Ivory Coast was a colony of French West Africa.
[7] According to the FAOSTAT database of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, production of "green" (i.e., unroasted) coffee beans in the Ivory Coast was the following (in tons):[8] Production of green robusta coffee output in the nation peaked at 380,000 tons in 2000.
[9] In 2014, the Ivorian agriculture minister announced a new annual production target of 400,000 tons of coffee by 2020, about four times its present rate.