Ivory Coast or Côte d’Ivoire, officially the Republic of Côte d’Ivoire (French: République de Côte d’Ivoire), is a country in West Africa. It has an area of 322,462 square kilometres, and borders the countries Liberia, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Ghana; its southern boundary is along the Gulf of Guinea. The country’s population was 15,366,672 in 1998 and was estimated to be 20,617,068 in 2009. Ivory Coast’s first national census in 1975 counted 6.7 million inhabitants.