Benín

Más allá de la capital, las principales ciudades son Cotonou, Parakou — cada una un centro de cultura regional, economía e historia. Porto-Novo, Benin's official capital, sits in the shadow of Cotonou, the far larger commercial city — the city's 19th-century Brazilian-style architecture, built by returning former slaves, gives it a distinctive streetscape unlike any other West African capital.

El idioma oficial es francés, que refleja el patrimonio cultural del país y lo conecta con una amplia comunidad internacional. Internacionalmente, Benín se contacta mediante el código +229. Benin is the birthplace of Vodoun — the original Fon and Ewe animist tradition of communicating with intermediary spirits that was carried across the Atlantic by enslaved people and transformed in the Americas — and the annual Vodoun Festival in Ouidah, held each January, draws practitioners from Brazil, Cuba and Haiti back to the source.

Benín comparte sus fronteras con Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, Togo. El tráfico rodado circula por la derecha, en consonancia con la convención de

La vida económica y cotidiana se rige por la zona horaria de UTC+01:00, alineando el país con sus vecinos regionales.

Benin's football development has been shaped by the Squirrels' qualification for the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations round of 16 — eliminating Morocco in the process — a result that generated the country's most significant football celebration since independence.

The Pendjari National Park in northern Benin is part of the W-Arli-Pendjari transboundary complex, one of West Africa's last intact large mammal ecosystems, home to elephants, lions, hippopotamuses and West African cheetahs — a wildlife conservation area whose continued viability depends on cross-border management agreements between Benin, Burkina Faso and Niger.