Benin Benin Benin ( , ; ), officially the Republic of Benin () and formerly Dahomey, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Togo to the west, Nigeria to the east, and Burkina Faso and Niger to the north. The majority of its population lives on the small southern coastline of the Bight of Benin, part of the Gulf of Guinea in the northernmost tropical portion of the Atlantic Ocean. The capital of Benin is Porto-Novo, but the seat of government is in Cotonou, the country's largest city and economic capital. Benin covers an area of and its
Human rights in Benin that year, Kérékou lost to Nicéphore Soglo and accepted the results of the vote. He was returned to power in the 1996 elections and re-elected in 2001; the 2006 elections, in which Kérékou did not run, was considered free and fair. Increasingly since 1991, Benin has been generally regarded as having considerably higher human-rights standards than most other African countries. It has been written that Benin "appears to be one of the leading democracies in Africa", but that the many human rights NGOs in the country, which date back to the transitional period, "do not network among themselves", so that