Benin is a country in West Africa that covers an area of 112,622 km2 and extends over 700 km4, from the Niger River in the north to the Atlantic coast in the south. Benin had 10,008,749 inhabitants in 2015. The country is part of ECOWAS. It has as neighbors Togo to the west, Nigeria to the east, and to the north the Niger and Burkina Faso.

Benin gained complete independence on 1 August 1960, under the name of the Republic of Dahomey. The powers were transmitted to President Hubert Maga by the French Minister of State Louis Jacquinot. In 1972, officer Mathieu Kérékou took power: in 1974 he adopted Marxism-Leninism as the official ideology of the government and, in 1975, renamed the People’s Republic of Benin.