Northwest African cheetah , including 238 cheetahs in Central African Republic and Chad, 191 cheetahs in Algeria and Mali, and 25 cheetahs in the transboundary W, Arli, and Pendjari protected area complex in Benin, Burkina Faso and Niger. In Niger, populations occur in the northern parts of the country in the Ténéré desert and in the southern savanna region of W National Park. Records in Togo date to the 1970s. The Saharan cheetah is thought to be regionally extinct in Morocco, Western Sahara, Senegal, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone, Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana. In Mali, cheetahs were sighted in Adrar des Ifoghas and in
Benin Bronzes modern period, which is an erroneous assumption considering the Benin Empire was in itself a hub of African civilization before the Portuguese traders visited. Today, it is clear that the bronzes were made in Benin from an indigenous culture. Many of these dramatic sculptures date to the thirteenth century, centuries before contact with Portuguese traders, and a large part of the collection dates to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It is believed that two "golden ages" in Benin metal workmanship occurred during the reigns of Esigie ( 1550) and of Eresoyen (1735–50), when their workmanship achieved its highest qualities. While