In the great movements of population going on around the globe, there are 300 million people living somewhere other than their country of birth – and three times as many have migrated within their own country. But for every migration there are those left behind and most of them are women and children.
The city of Daloa and its surrounding villages in western Ivory Coast encompasses all of this. An important regional hub, the trade in cocoa and coffee made Daloa prosperous and provided people with a relatively comfortable life. Small landowners could employ people to work the land for them and extend their fields to the forests. Labour came from elsewhere in Ivory Coast and from Burkina Faso, Guinea and Mali, but also Ghana and Liberia. Ivory Coast is home to between 4 million and 5 million foreigners, more than a quarter of its population.
