Tag Archives: Study in Benin

Benin is an artificial creation although its southern part corresponds broadly to the reign of Abomey, which strengthened at the time of the slave trade (the coast of the country was called the Slave Coast) and passed into the century. XIX under the French. These subsequently extended their dominion northwards as far as the course of the Niger river, thus welding the territory to the Sudanese possessions; the eastern and western borders are those defined with Great Britain and Germany on the basis of the agreements of 1897 and 1898. The country achieved independence in 1960, without changing its configuration; it encompassed only the small Portuguese enclave of Ouidah, overlooking the coast. Until 1975 the name of Benin was Dahomey. Although a few decades have passed, the colonial past still weighs negatively on the country, which is still looking for a solution to its many and serious problems, having neither significant natural wealth nor a particularly interesting strategic position at its disposal. In addition to the territorial rivalries between the many ethnic groups, the main difficulties lie in the almost complete economic dependence on cotton, in a high public debt and in an extraordinary diffusion of the informal economy. The picture is partly mitigated by the signs of improvement, detected at the beginning of the 2000s in relation to some significant indicators (such as life expectancy) and trends towards forms of economic integration with neighboring countries. According to COUNTRYAAH, Benin is a nation in Western Africa, the capital city of which is Porto-Novo. The latest population of Benin is 12,123,211. REMZFAMILY: Lists and descriptions of main religions and beliefs in Benin, including religion demographics and statistics on Christianity, Islam, Judaism, etc.
GEOGRAPHY
The territory structurally corresponds to a section of the Guinean penepian; that is, it is made up of ancient reliefs that form the dividing ridge between the Nigerian, Voltaic and Guinean basins. They do not generally exceed 600 m in height and morphologically they have smooth and mature profiles. The Atakora massif, in the north-western section, is the residual part of an archaeozoic relief of quartzite rocks which still retains the original alignment of the folds, from NE to SW; elsewhere Inselberge dominatesgranite that dominate slight undulations, hollows and very open valleys. The relief gradually slopes towards the S, where sedimentary soils, mainly marly, from the Cenozoic era overlap the archaeozoic formations of the base, and to these, near the coast, alluvial deposits. The southern area, flat, is the richest and most populous section of the country; it overlooks the sea with a coast of 120 km, low and straight, bordered by sandy cords that close off large lagoons. These follow one another almost continuously; the largest is the Nokoué lagoon, which communicates with the sea through a canal. Apart from Niger, which for approx. 150 km marks the border with the homonymous state, the largest river in the country is the Ouémé, which with a meridian course crosses central and southern Benin for 450 km, flowing into the Nokoué lagoon. Parallel to it flow, further west, other tributaries of the Atlantic Ocean, including the Kouffo and the Mono, which in the lower stretch forms the border with Togo. The northernmost part of the country, on the other hand, belongs hydrographically to the Niger river basin, which here receives various tributaries including the Alibori and the Mékrou, and to a small extent to that of the Volta to which it pays, through the Oti, the Pendjari River. From a climatic point of view, the country has Guinean conditions in the southern and central sections, Sudanese in the North: this means that rainfall and their regime, as well as temperatures, change from S to N. On the coast, the two dry seasons and the two rainy ones are very marked: the first rainy season runs from March to July, followed by the small dry season, which lasts until September; then begins the new rainy season, less intense than the previous one, which ends in October; from November to March there is the great dry season, during which, however, thunderstorms can occur. Temperatures have little seasonal variation and range between 25 and 27 ºC; in the North, the averages drop by a few degrees, but the temperature changes daily and seasonal are marked. Throughout the northern part, where there is the typical Sudanese two-season climate, rainfall does not exceed 900 mm (Kandi, Savé) and falls mostly between July and August. Overall, among the Guinean countries, this is one of the least rainy and this above all due to its position set back with respect to the general coastline of the area.