Benin
Capital: Porto-Novo · West Africa
Heartland of the Kingdom of Dahomey and the birthplace of Vodun, with royal palaces, bronze arts and one of West Africa's richest ritual calendars.
Ethnic communities
- FonFounders of Dahomey; Vodun religion and royal appliqué arts
- YorubaEastern Benin communities linked to Ife and Oyo
- BaribaHorsemen and rulers of the northern Borgou kingdoms
- Somba (Betammaribe)Builders of fortified tata somba tower-houses
More communities of Benin
- Adja · Tado-origin kin of the Fon on the Mono river
- Yoruba (Nago) · Ketu and eastern towns within the orisha world
- Bariba (Baatombu) · Borgu horsemen and gaani festival kingdoms
- Fulbe (Peul) · Northern herders on the Borgu pastures
- Dendi · Songhai-speaking river traders of the north
- Mina (Gen) · Coastal lagoon traders from the Aného shore
- Xwla & Xweda · Lagoon fishers — old Ouidah's first peoples
- Mahi · Central hill farmers north of old Dahomey
- Toffin · Lake dwellers of Ganvié's stilt city
- Ottamari & Waama · Atacora highland farmers of fortified homesteads
- Lokpa & Yom · Northwestern Gur-speaking farming communities
- Boko · Borderland Mande-related farmers of the northeast
- Anii · Small Bassila-region language island of the hills
Languages
Major languages: Fon, Yoruba, Bariba, French
Language families: Niger-Congo (Gbe, Yoruboid, Gur)
Historical kingdoms & states
- • Kingdom of Dahomey
- • Allada
- • Porto-Novo (Hogbonu)
- • Borgu states
Heritage sites
- • Royal Palaces of Abomey
- • Koutammakou (shared with Togo)
- • Ouidah slave route
Cultural highlights
National heroes of Benin
See all African heroesFigures widely honoured here, across politics, sport, the arts and public life.
- Music & the artsb. 1960
Angélique Kidjo
Music
Five-time Grammy winner who has moved between Beninese tradition, funk and orchestral work, and a long-serving UNICEF ambassador.
- Politics & liberation1845–1906
Béhanzin
Anticolonial resistance
Last independent king of Dahomey, who fought the French invasion of 1892 with an army that included the celebrated women's regiments. Exiled to Martinique.
- Sportb. 1984
Stéphane Sessègnon
Football
Long-serving captain of the Squirrels and the first Beninese player to establish himself in the English Premier League.
Deep-dive community profiles
Aja
The parent people of the Fon and the Ewe — inhabitants of Tado, the town from which both dynasties trace their origin, keepers of the Vodun tradition at its source, and farmers of the Mono river valley between two countries.
Open deep profile →Ana (Ifè) of Togo
The Yoruba of the Atakpamé hills — a western outpost of the Ifè world, separated from the Nigerian heartland by two borders, who kept the orisha, the language and the claim of descent from Ilé-Ifè itself.
Open deep profile →Bariba (Baatombu)
The horsemen of Borgu — whose Wasangari nobility rode against every empire that approached, whose Nikki and Parakou courts still hold the Gaani festival, and whose kingdom Islam, Songhai and the Sokoto Caliphate all failed to conquer.
Open deep profile →Batammariba (Tamberma)
The people who build houses like fortresses — makers of the takienta, a two-storey earthen tower-house with granary turrets and a rooftop terrace, whose whole cosmology is expressed in the building and whose valley is a World Heritage site.
Open deep profile →Dendi
The Songhay of the far south — descendants of the Songhay empire's survivors who withdrew downriver after Tondibi, and who became the Muslim merchants of northern Benin's Niger valley towns.
Open deep profile →Ewe
The people of the Volta estuary and coastal lagoons whose polyrhythmic drumming, kente weaving and Vodu religion shaped three nations — bound by the memory of a shared escape from the tyrant king of Notsé.
Open deep profile →Fon
Founders of the Kingdom of Dahomey — the disciplined royal state of Abomey with its women warriors, appliqué chronicles and bas-relief palaces — and the heartland people of Vodun, the religion that crossed the Atlantic and reshaped the Americas.
Open deep profile →Gourmantché
The people of the eastern savanna — farmers and hunters of a kingdom that survived alongside the Mossi for six centuries, whose diviners are consulted across the region, and whose country has become the epicentre of the Sahel's insurgency.
Open deep profile →Holli (Ohori)
The forest Yoruba who stayed apart — a community of the Benin-Nigeria borderland known for resisting both the Dahomey kingdom and French rule, and for a scarification tradition so distinctive it functioned as a passport.
Open deep profile →Kabye
The terrace farmers of Togo's northern mountains — iron-working people who turned steep rock into fields, whose evala wrestling initiations turn a whole region out every July, and who have supplied Togo's army and its rulers for sixty years.
Open deep profile →Songhai
Heirs of West Africa's largest empire — the Niger-bend civilization of Gao, Timbuktu and the askias, whose farmers, fishers and traders still line the great river from Mali through Niger.
Open deep profile →Tem (Kotokoli)
The Muslim traders of central Togo — a kingdom at Tchamba and Sokodé whose long-distance merchants linked the forest to the Sahel, and whose Adossa knife festival at the end of Ramadan has men in trance driving blades against their own bodies.
Open deep profile →Yoruba
One of Africa's great urban civilizations — over 40 million people whose sacred city of Ilé-Ifẹ̀, orisha religion, divination science and bronze-casting mastery have shaped world culture from Lagos to Bahia and Havana.
Open deep profile →Zarma (Djerma)
The people of Niger's south-west — Songhay-speaking farmers of the river valley who resisted French conquest at Lougou under a woman ruler, whose holey possession cult sends the spirits of the bush into dancers' bodies, and who supply much of Niger's civil service.
Open deep profile →