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Can you locate all 39 prefectures of Togo?
Can you locate all 16 regions of Ghana?
Can you locate all ten districts of Lesotho?
Can you locate all 8 regions of Niger?
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Benin is a strip of West Africa that runs from a short Gulf of Guinea coast north to the Niger river, and the department is the unit that tells you where on that strip a round is. There are only twelve of them, and one is a single city.
The departments of Benin, the first tier of the country. Until 1999 there were six, and each of the others was cut from one of them: Alibori from Borgou, Donga from Atacora, Collines from Zou, Plateau from Ouémé, Couffo from Mono and Littoral from Atlantique. That is why a map from before then looks so different, and why a department's name often belongs to a bigger, older one.
The map is lopsided in a way worth learning. The two northern departments, Alibori and Borgou, are by far the largest and take up nearly half of the country between them, while the five southern ones are crowded into a coastal strip not much more than a hundred kilometres deep. Littoral is not much more than the city of Cotonou, which makes it a tiny answer in the middle of the coast.
The groups are not an official classification. Benin has no tier between the department and the country, so the quiz cuts the twelve into the north, the centre and the south to let you drill the map a piece at a time. The departments are the Benin Communes grouped, so the borders of the two maps match exactly.
Littoral is Cotonou and nothing else, the economic capital and the main port, squeezed between the Atlantic and Lake Nokoué. It is the smallest department by a very long way, so it is the one you will most often reach for with a tap area.
Alibori is the northernmost department and the largest, on the Niger river and the borders with Niger and Burkina Faso. Much of it is the savannah of the W National Park, so it is empty on a round as often as it is crowded.
Collines was cut from Zou in 1999 and sits in the centre of the country, in the hills the name describes. Nothing about its outline is memorable, which is why it is best found from the departments around it: Zou to the south, Borgou and Donga to the north.
Twelve. There were six until 1999, when Atacora, Atlantique, Borgou, Mono, Ouémé and Zou each gave up part of their area to a new department.
Porto-Novo is the official capital, in Ouémé. Cotonou, in Littoral, is the largest city and the seat of the government.
Benin has nothing between the departments and the country, so the north, the centre and the south are a way to drill the map, not a classification.
The tier below this one is Benin Communes. For another country in the region, see Ghana Regions.
