Ghana–Ivory Coast border

Gold Coast and Ivory Coast

Britain and France set the line between their colonies in a series of agreements. The first, of 10 August 1889, started it at Newtown on the coast and ran it along the lagoons Tendo and Ehy and the Tano River; later agreements in 1891, 1893 and 1898 carried it north to the 9th parallel and then along the Black Volta to the 11th.^[1]

The 1893 arrangement gave Britain and France separate frontiers through the lagoons, leaving neutral waters between them: the British line followed the south bank of the Tendo lagoon, the French the north bank. An agreement of 1903, accepted in notes of May 1905, set the present line in detail, following the main channel of the Tano and then, for more than half its length, straight segments marked by pillars.^[1]

“Starting from the sea-coast at Newtown, at a distance of 1,000 metres to the west of the house occupied in 1884 by the British Commissioners”^[1]

Two independent states

Ghana became independent on 6 March 1957, and Ivory Coast on 7 August 1960. A joint demarcation commission was set up in 1968 and met regularly from 1970.^[1]

At sea the two countries disagreed over an area holding several oil and gas fields, and in 2014 they submitted the dispute to a Special Chamber of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. On 23 September 2017 it ruled largely in Ghana’s favour, drawing a single boundary for the territorial sea, exclusive economic zone and continental shelf. It rejected Ghana’s argument that Ivory Coast was barred from objecting to the line Ghana had used, but found that Ghana had not violated Ivory Coast’s rights by expanding oil exploration in the disputed area.^[2]