Benin's culture: a state that honours the spirits it once banned

How many Beninese follow Vodun in each count

The religious figures for Benin disagree more than most, and the disagreement is about what counts. The 2013 census recorded 48.5% of the population as Christian, 27.7% as Muslim, 11.6% as practising Vodun, 2.6% as practising other local traditional religions, 2.6% other religions and 5.8% none. A Demographic and Health Survey in 2011 to 2012 found 57.5% Christian and 22.8% Muslim. The Pew Research Center, projecting to 2020 from 2010 data in a publication of 2026, estimated 53% Christian, 31% Muslim, 11% other religions including traditional faiths and 5% with none.

Wikipedia's article on the religion gives an undated estimate of about 17%, some 1.6 million people, as Vodun followers, without counting other traditional religions, and adds that many who call themselves Christian practise a syncretic religion close to Haitian Vodou or Brazilian Candomblé. Britannica makes the same point from the other side: many Christians and Muslims keep elements of traditional belief. A census question asks for one religion, and much of southern practice does not fit one box.

The regional pattern is steadier than the totals. Britannica describes a largely Muslim north and a largely animist and Christian south. Wikipedia places Islam, brought by the Songhai Empire and Hausa merchants, in Alibori, Borgou and Donga and among the Yoruba, and records the Pew estimate that Muslims rose from 23.5% to 31.4% of the population between 2010 and 2020. Christian missions have worked on the coast since the sixteenth century, and Britannica gives Roman Catholics as about half of all Christians. The 2013 census counts Roman Catholics at 25.5%, the Celestial Church of Christ at 6.7% and Methodists at 3.4%.

What Vodun worship involves in southern Benin

Vodun has no central authority. Wikipedia's article describes it as the religion of the Aja, Ewe and Fon of Benin, Togo, Ghana and Nigeria, and the word as meaning spirit or divinity in the Gbe languages. Its spirits are many. Legba, the spirit of the crossroads, opens communication with the spirit world and is often consulted first; Dan is a serpent spirit associated with riches; Sakpata is the spirit of earth and smallpox; Hevioso rules thunder and is represented by a fire-spitting ram; Gu is the spirit of iron and war. On parts of the coast Mami Wata is not one spirit but a whole pantheon, portrayed from a late nineteenth-century print of a circus snake charmer.

Divination is by Fá, the Fon form of the Yoruba Ifá, which Wikipedia's article describes as the method most practitioners trust, and a diviner is a bokónó. Initiation into Fá usually takes less than a week in Benin, while other cults take weeks or months. Two all-male secret societies, Oró and Egúngún, came west from the Yoruba; in Benin a young man is often initiated into both on the same day. The figurines called bocio, made in the Fon and Ayizo country of the south, are kept in shrines or houses and were labelled idols and fetishes by early European travellers.

The religion carries the history of the coast. Wikipedia records that after Agaja conquered Hueda the Hueda serpent spirit was widely adopted by the Fon, and that Ouidah, a point of embarkation for captives from the 1670s to the 1860s, sent Vodun practitioners to the Americas, where the Fon religion became one of the two main sources of Haitian Vodou. Britannica calls Ouidah the spiritual capital of the religion and records its annual Vodun festival in January.

How the state turned from banning to honouring Vodun

The People's Republic treated Vodun as waste. Wikipedia's article records that Mathieu Kérékou banned Vodun ceremonies in the rainy season in 1973 and added further measures through the 1970s, so that priests performed initiations in secret and shortened them from years to weeks or days. The article on the People's Republic describes Vodun as prohibited under a campaign against witchcraft and retrograde beliefs.

Democracy reversed the policy. Nicéphore Soglo, as prime minister from 1991, lifted many of the anti-Vodun laws. The government planned a festival called Ouidah 92, the First International Festival of Vodun Arts and Cultures, which took place in 1993, and in the same year it made 10 January an annual national Vodun day. The holiday has since moved: Wikipedia's list of public holidays gives the second Friday in January, and timeanddate's calendar for 2026 has the Vodun Days on Thursday 8 and Friday 9 January. From the 1990s it encouraged tourism built on the religion, and Wikipedia's article describes foreigners, mostly from the United States, arriving for initiation, many into Fá.

The reversal did not settle the question for every believer. The same article records that some Beninese regard Christianity as less worrying and less expensive than Vodun, and that people have converted in order to be protected from witchcraft without paying for offerings.

Which languages Beninese speak and write

French is the only official language in the country's record, and Britannica describes it as the language of instruction. Each ethnic group has its own language, and most adults also speak the language that dominates their region. Britannica names Fon and Gen, also called Mina, of the Kwa branch of Niger-Congo; Bariba, of the Gur branch; Yoruba; and Dendi, a Songhai language. Wikipedia counts about 42 ethnic groups. Britannica gives the Fon as about two-fifths of the population, the Yoruba about one-eighth and the Bariba about one-tenth, with the Adja peoples, the Goun, the Fulani, the Somba and the Dendi among the rest.

Schooling moves between them. Wikipedia describes local languages used for instruction in the early years of primary school, with French introduced later and used alone at secondary level. The national languages are written in their own alphabet, with a separate letter for each sound where French would use accents or English digraphs: Beninese Yoruba is written differently from Nigerian Yoruba, and the name of the Fon language is spelled Fon gbe. The 1990 constitution has been translated into eight of the national languages.

Literacy has more than tripled since the People's Republic. Wikipedia gives adult literacy at 51% in 2022 against 16% in 1979, with men at 63% and women at 42% in 2022.

Higher education is younger than the state. Britannica dates the University of Abomey-Calavi, in Cotonou, to 1970; it was the University of Dahomey until 1975 and the National University of Benin until 2001, and its students have been, with the trade unions, a main political force since the early 1980s. The University of Parakou opened in the north in 2001. The Marxist government's school reforms of the mid-1970s, meant to shed French influence, met objections from teachers, parents and students over standards and were largely abandoned by the late 1980s, so the system still follows the French pattern of six years of primary and six of secondary school.

What the royal workshops and mask makers produce

Britannica describes artistic traditions in practically every village, with carved wooden masks representing the spirits of the dead as the most prominent form. It names bronze statuettes, pottery, fire engraving on wooden bowls and appliqué cloths that recount the history of the kings of Dahomey, and it calls the Yoruba Gelede masks of the Porto-Novo region the best known of all.

The appliqué cloths and the palace reliefs come from the court at Abomey. UNESCO describes the Royal Palaces as a centre for developing craft techniques and storing the kingdom's treasures, with polychrome bas-reliefs as one of their main architectural features; the palaces of Gezo and Glele house the Historical Museum of Abomey, and Britannica records an artisan village attached to it. Other museums hold the rest: an ethnographic museum in Porto-Novo, a historical museum in Ouidah and an open-air museum of ethnography and natural sciences in Parakou. The National Library is in Porto-Novo.

Some of the court's objects came back in 2022. On 20 February 2022 an exhibition opened with 26 pieces of sacred art returned by France, 129 years after colonial forces looted them. The same year a statue of a woman soldier of Dahomey, 30 metres tall, went up in Cotonou.

In the northwest the architecture is the art. UNESCO lists Koutammakou, the land of the Batammariba, with the dates 2004 and 2023, and Britannica describes the thatched, turreted houses of the Somba region.

How Beninese writers and musicians found an audience

Literature was oral before French became dominant. Félix Couchoro wrote the first Beninese novel, L'Esclave, in 1929. The kingdom and its fall have been retold in drama and fiction: Jean Pliya's play Kondo le requin, of 1967, tells of Behanzin's struggle, and Maryse Condé's novel The Last of the African Kings follows his exile.

After independence folk music was combined with Ghanaian highlife, French cabaret, American rock, funk and soul and Congolese rumba, according to Wikipedia. Britannica describes street musicians in town neighbourhoods and modern dance troupes in clubs. Contemporary art gained its own event: the Biennale Benin began in 2010 as a joint project called Regard Benin and became a biennial run by a federation of local associations in 2012.

Radio broadcasts from Cotonou in French, English and several local languages. Britannica describes a limited television service and a government-controlled daily, La Nation, with two other dailies and several weeklies.

What Beninese cooks build a meal on

The grain decides the meal. Wikipedia describes southern cooking built on maize, ground into flour and made into a dough served with sauces of groundnut or tomato, and northern cooking built on yams served with the same sauces. Fish, chicken, beef, goat and bush rat are eaten, and in the north beef and pork are fried in palm or groundnut oil or cooked in sauce, with some dishes using cheese. Couscous, rice and beans are common, and mangoes, oranges, avocados, bananas and pineapples are the fruits. Meals are described as light on meat and generous with vegetable fat, and smoked fish and chicken roasted on wooden spits are standard preparations.

The crops behind it are the ones the country grows. The harvest of 2018 in Wikipedia's economy article ran to 3.8 million tonnes of cassava, 2.7 million of yams and 1.5 million of maize.

Where the old kingdoms survive in public life

The kingdoms are still there. Wikipedia describes many non-sovereign monarchs, several descended from precolonial states such as Allada, with ceremonial roles and real influence in local politics, represented nationally by the High Council of Kings. A law of 2025 recognised 16 kingdoms, 80 senior chiefdoms and 10 customary chiefdoms.

Names carry older links too. Some Beninese in the south have Akan names giving the day of the week on which they were born, a sign of the influence of the Akan peoples such as the Akwamu. Britannica describes the family compound as the centre of town life outside the modern quarters, where extended families practise their rites and hold festivals with music and dance, and markets selling food, cloth, medicines and art as the centre of the day. The sports played most, Wikipedia records, are football and basketball, with golf, cycling, baseball, tennis and rugby union beside them.