Benin
Benin · Africa · updated 05.08.2026
Benin is noticeably calmer than the region's reputation suggests: 1.13 homicides per 100,000 people (World Bank, 2017 data — the authorities publish nothing more recent for the country), political stability −0.4 and control of corruption −0.24 on the World Bank scale from −2.5 to +2.5. The strong points end there: life expectancy 60.96 years, health spending of 46.5 dollars per person a year, basic water access for 69.6 per cent of the population, and mean PM2.5 of 39.66 micrograms per cubic metre — nearly ten times the WHO guideline. Road deaths run at 24.8 per 100,000. Natural risk is moderate overall (3.1 out of 10 on INFORM), but flooding scores 6.7. The immigration framework has been rewritten from scratch and simplified: law No. 2025-15 of July 2025 and the decree of March 2026 left two resident statuses instead of three — an ordinary card for three years and a privileged one for ten. Two rules are worth knowing in advance: silence from the authority at the end of the decision period counts as a refusal, and a visa refusal cannot be appealed at all — three days are allowed to leave. Fees for nationals of ECOWAS states and for everyone else differ by a factor of five or more. There is no separate work permit: the labour directorate endorses the contract with a foreigner, and that is the employer's obligation.
Some descriptions for this country are still Russian only: 92% translated. Numbers, prices and timelines are complete.
Entry
Entry rules depend on citizenship. Choose a passport to see the requirement for that one.
Work and visas
- Visa speed
- 3 working days for a short visa at the DEI, 24 hours for the electronic one, 3–7 days by the portal's norm
Visa types: Beninese law has two visa categories: transit and stay (art. 4 of decree No. 2026-049). A transit visa allows the holder to cross the country from one border to another, but for no more than eight days (art. 5), and is issued within two days of the application (art. 12). · The stay visa comes in four types (art. 6 of the decree). Tourist or visitor — a stay for family, professional, medical or tourist reasons of no more than 90 days, renewable for the same period; issued online (art. 7). Business (visa affaires) — 90 days per entry within a two-year validity, renewable. Professional — up to 12 months for professional activity, renewable. Study — up to 12 months. · The electronic visa (e-visa) is issued online: 32,798 CFA francs for a single entry for 30 days, 49,197 for multiple entries for 30 days and 65,596 for multiple entries for 90 days. The issuing norm is 24 hours. Source: service card PS00005 on the state portal service-public.bj. · The resident visa is issued inside the country, at the premises of the Directorate of Emigration and Immigration (DEI) in Cotonou: three months — 90 euros, six months — 120 euros, a year — 180 euros; the norm is 3–7 days. By the DEI's own guide, a short visa is collected on the third working day after enrolment, while a long one requires a prior letter to the director and an answer accepting or refusing the application before any payment. Source: service card PS00407 and dei.gouv.bj/obtenir_visa/. · Every foreigner who intends to settle in the country must obtain a resident card (art. 12 of law No. 2025-15). There are two statuses: ordinary resident and privileged (art. 15 of the decree). An ordinary resident is someone who has shown means of subsistence, or a third party's guarantee, or another legitimate interest in living in Benin, and is of good character (art. 17). The ordinary resident card is valid for three years, the privileged one for ten, and both are renewable (art. 19). The issue fee for nationals of ECOWAS states and for everyone else differs by a factor of five and more: the ordinary card costs 50,000 against 250,000 CFA francs, the privileged one 100,000 against 800,000. · Immigration law provides for no separate work permit: the contract of employment with a foreigner is endorsed by the General Directorate of Labour under the Labour Code (law No. 98-004 of 27.01.1998), and that endorsement is the employer's obligation, not the worker's. Source: service card PS00417 “Visa de contrat d'expatrié” on service-public.bj.
The data were collected on 05.08.2026 through the state services portal service-public.bj. The portal is a single-page application and returns an empty shell to an ordinary request, but its own interface calls the open address service-public.bj/api/portal/publicservices/, which returns both the full list of 1,198 services and the card for each one with its processing norm, tariff, list of documents and — most importantly — attached files of the underlying legislation. That is how the scans of law No. 2025-15 and decree No. 2026-049 were obtained. A second site, dei.gouv.bj (Directorate of Emigration and Immigration), responds and sets out the procedure step by step. A discrepancy visible only on reading the primary source: the descriptive part of card PS00409 on the portal still sets out the former regime — three types of card (temporary, ordinary, privileged), ten years of uninterrupted residence and entry into the country before the age of 35 for the privileged one. The decree of 04.03.2026 abolished that regime: there are now two statuses, and the condition for the privileged one is two renewals of the ordinary resident card plus employment, real property, effective conjugal residence, a company or another permanent occupation (art. 18). The DEI's guide also still speaks of a temporary card. What is set out here is the decree. Two features of the procedure that hardly exist anywhere else: silence from the authority once the period for issuing or renewing the card has expired counts as a REFUSAL (art. 16 of the law), and a visa refusal cannot be appealed at all — the person must leave within three days (art. 15 of the law, art. 24 of the decree). A refusal of the resident card can be appealed. In addition, a neighbourhood inquiry is carried out for a first card, and some applicants pay a repatriation bond into the treasury plus 20 per cent of it into the DEI's account. The deadlines for submitting and issuing visas other than transit were left by the decree to an order of the minister for security (art. 12) — the order itself was not found in open access, so visaSpeed carries the norms published by the agency and the portal rather than a provision of the act. Source: Law No. 2025-15 of 02.07.2025 “relative à l'entrée, au séjour, à la résidence et à la sortie des étrangers en République du Bénin” and Decree No. 2026-049 of 04.03.2026 “portant conditions et modalités de délivrance des visas et cartes de résident en République du Bénin”; both acts were downloaded as scans (no text layer) from the state services portal service-public.bj, service card PS00409 “Carte de résident (ordinaire-privilégié)”, and read page by page on 05.08.2026. **Added on 25.08.2026, when the grounds were laid out into fields.** There are eight grounds: two resident cards (the ordinary one for three years and the privileged one for ten), four types of residence visa (professional, study, business, tourist) and two labour documents — the work permit and the endorsement of an expatriate employment contract. Number check: 7 of 7. **The address of the fee on every record points at the portal's open programmatic endpoint rather than at the service page.** There are two reasons, and neither can be worked around: decree No. 2026-049, which sets the tariff, is posted by the agency as a scan with no text layer, and the service page on the portal is a single-page application that serves a plain request nothing but a shell with no figures in it. Only `service-public.bj/api/portal/publicservices/PS00409` and its siblings are readable: the same cards, in text. `officialUrl` has been left human — that is where a reader goes, not a check. **The fee for a visa depends on the length of the term rather than on the purpose of the trip.** All four types of residence visa share one tariff: 59,036 CFA francs (90 euros) for three months, 78,715 (120 euros) for six, 118,072 (180 euros) for a year. What separates the types is not the price but the period they allow, and the fact that the business visa's two-year validity gives no more than ninety days per entry. The e-visa is counted separately: 32,798 for a single entry of a month, 49,197 for multiple entries over a month, 65,596 for multiple entries over ninety days, with a turnaround of twenty-four hours. **The resident card fee for citizens of ECOWAS states is five and eight times smaller.** The ordinary card is 50,000 CFA francs against 250,000, the privileged one 100,000 against 800,000. The fields carry the rates without the reduction, and the reduced ones are named in the note on the fee. **`countsTowardPr` is true on the ordinary card alone, and that is the source's assertion rather than ours.** Article 18 of the decree requires two renewals of the ordinary resident card for privileged status — that is, time on the ordinary card leads directly to the local equivalent of permanent residence. The field is empty on the privileged card itself: that card is the end point. It is empty on the visas too — the decree nowhere says that visa time counts towards anything, and ascribing that to it would make the rule ours rather than its. **The SEZ card was read, but not recorded as a ground.** On 24.08.2026 the page `dei.gouv.bj/services/` described a third kind of card: a resident card of the Glo-Djigbé special economic zone for foreign investors and operators, valid five years and costing 350,000 CFA francs. It cannot be recorded as a ground for three reasons at once. Decree No. 2026-049 of 04.03.2026 (art. 15) names exactly two statuses. That same DEI page, as noted above, still describes the repealed scheme with a temporary card — so its content is of mixed vintage, and there is nothing on it to tell what is in force from what is out of date. And on 25.08.2026 the domain `dei.gouv.bj` does not answer at all: the name resolves to 137.255.12.182, but no connection is established on port 443 or on port 80, with or without `www`, over four attempts in a row. A day earlier it answered. The archive is no help either: the last snapshot of the services section was taken on 20.01.2025, that is before law No. 2025-15 and before the decree, and it carries the earlier tariff. **Hence, too, what is absent from the records.** The one-month visa rate (45,916 CFA francs, 70 euros) and the reduced rates for dual nationals (13,119, 29,519 and 49,197 for three, six and twelve months) stand only on the DEI page that is unreachable today — the portal cards do not carry them, and they did not go into the fields. Order No. 134/MFPTRA/DC/SGM/DT/SA of 07.11.2000, which sets the cost of endorsing an employment contract and of the work permit, could not be found in open access: the 50,000 CFA francs for the permit are readable in the service card, and the cost of endorsing a contract is named nowhere. The Directorate General of Labour publishes no turnaround target for either labour document. The sources were read again on 25.08.2026: service cards PS00409, PS00407, PS00005, PS00403 and PS00417 through the state portal's open programmatic endpoint.
Long-term visas and residence permits
Ordinary resident card (three years)
OtherPrivileged resident card (ten years)
OtherProfessional visa (up to 12 months)
WorkStudy visa (up to 12 months)
StudyBusiness visa (90 days per entry, two-year validity)
OtherTourist or visitor visa (e-visa, up to 90 days)
OtherWork permit issued by the Directorate General of Labour
WorkEndorsement of an expatriate employment contract
WorkProgramme terms change, and the final decision rests with the consulate or the country migration service. The data is collected from official sources on the date shown and is not legal advice.
Residence and citizenship
- Permanent residence after
- 6 years
- Citizenship after
- 3 years
Permanent status. Benin's equivalent of permanent residence is the privileged resident card: it is valid for ten years and is renewable (art. 19 of decree No. 2026-049). The decree names no number of years of residence; it names a condition — obtaining two renewals of the ordinary resident card (art. 18). The ordinary resident card is issued for three years, so the second renewal falls in the sixth year — hence prYears = 6. That is not a figure taken from the act but a direct consequence of two of its articles, and it can be checked against them. Besides the period, the applicant must show employment or a permanent activity, real property, effective conjugal residence, a company created or a functioning industrial or commercial establishment. Separately, the minister for security may grant privileged status to any foreigner whose residence in the country is of particular interest to Benin. The former regime required ten years of uninterrupted residence and entry into the country before the age of 35; the services portal still describes exactly that, but the decree of 04.03.2026 abolished it. Citizenship. Naturalisation requires a certificate of residence in the country of at least three years, together with a birth certificate, a medical examination, a work certificate or an extract from the commercial register, a certificate of nationality of the country of origin and a tax clearance; the decision takes six to twelve months, and examining the file costs 45,000 CFA francs plus 3,200 francs in stamp and registry fees. Citizenship by birth and residence in the country requires sixteen years of life in Benin. The figure of three years comes from the list of documents published by the ministry of justice itself: the text of the nationality code (law No. 65-17 of 23.06.1965 and decree No. 272/PC-MJL of 11.08.1965) is not posted on the portal and was not found on any reachable Beninese domain, so it could not be checked against the code itself. Source: service card PS00026 “Acquisition de la nationalité béninoise” on the state portal service-public.bj; the responsible authority is the ministry of justice.
Processing fees
- Long-stay visa
- 118 072 XOF
- Residence permit
- 250 000 XOF
Long-stay visa: A one-year resident visa, issued at the Directorate of Emigration and Immigration in Cotonou (the portal also gives the price in euros — 180); three months cost 59,036 francs, six months 78,715. The issuing norm is 3–7 days
Residence permit: The ordinary resident card, non-ECOWAS band; nationals of ECOWAS states pay 50,000 francs. The privileged card costs 800,000 against 100,000. The decision period is 45 days; the basis is decree No. 2026-049 of 04.03.2026
Documents
- Document certification
- consular legalisation
The country does not accept apostilles: documents go through consular legalisation in three steps — ministry of justice, foreign ministry, consulate.
Family
Partner
- Timeline
- 45 days for the resident card — the portal's general norm; the law has no separate family route; citizenship by marriage is processed in 10–15 days
Beninese law has no separate family category of residence permit: the spouse of a citizen obtains the ordinary resident card on the general conditions — under art. 17 of decree No. 2026-049 it is enough to show means of subsistence, a third party's guarantee or “another legitimate interest in living in Benin”. Marriage is taken into account outright at the next step: effective conjugal residence in Benin is named as one of the grounds for privileged status (art. 18). The norm for deciding an application for the resident card is 45 days; it is the same for every applicant, and it is that figure — not some separate family one — that appears in the “Timeline” field. The second route is citizenship by marriage: the application is signed by both spouses and addressed to the minister of justice, accompanied by birth certificates bearing the marginal note of the marriage, proof of residence for both, the citizen spouse's certificate of nationality and copies of the marriage certificate; the list requires no period of residence at all, and the decision takes 10–15 days against six to twelve months for naturalisation. The fee is the same — 45,000 CFA francs. Such a spouse's right to work is not addressed separately: a foreigner's employment contract is endorsed by the General Directorate of Labour in any case. Sources: service cards PS00409 and PS00026 on the state portal service-public.bj, Decree No. 2026-049 of 04.03.2026 “portant conditions et modalités de délivrance des visas et cartes de résident en République du Bénin”.
Parents
Partner's parents
Pets
- Limit
- no limit
- Cost per animal
- $ 17,1 – $ 17,1
The state describes the import of pets plainly and briefly. Veterinary control and the issue of international sanitary certificates for live animals — “livestock, pets, reptiles and others” — are run by the Directorate of Livestock (Direction de l'Élevage). The importer must submit a written application addressed to the Director of Livestock and a sanitary certificate from the country of origin; the fee is 10,000 CFA francs for a dog, cat, monkey or wild animal (for comparison: 5,000 for a parrot, 1,500 per head of small livestock), and processing takes 48 hours. The tariff rests on order No. 045/MAEP/MEF/MDGLAAT of 15.02.2008 on charges for veterinary services. This procedure says nothing at all about quarantine, rabies antibody titration or preparation time, so those fields are left empty: their absence from a list is not the same as a published “not required”. There is no UK export health certificate for cats and dogs to Benin (the gov.uk register holds only meat and poultry for the country), so there is no second state source to cross-check the requirements against. Source: service card PS00501 “Contrôle sanitaire et délivrance des certificats sanitaires internationaux à l'importation et a l'exportation des animaux vivants” on the state portal service-public.bj, checked on 05.08.2026.
Safety
Climate
Quality of life
- Life expectancy
- 61 years
Cities
Cotonou
The economic capital and largest city: the port, the airport, government agencies and the Directorate of Emigration and Immigration, through which visas and resident cards pass, are all here. The official capital is Porto-Novo, but the actual centre of government and business life is Cotonou.
The main risk of the coastal strip is flooding: the country scores 6.7 out of 10 on the INFORM scale against 3.1 for natural risk overall. The rainy season falls in two periods, April to July and September to November. Earthquakes, cyclones and tsunamis are rated close to zero for this coast.
Porto-Novo
The official capital and seat of the National Assembly, yet noticeably quieter and cheaper than Cotonou, some 30 kilometres away along the coastal road. Colonial-era buildings and museums.
The same risks as the coast in general: flooding in the rainy season (6.7 out of 10 on the INFORM scale), with drought and seismicity close to zero.
Grocery basket
- Bread, 500 g
- $ 1,18
- Milk, 1 l
- $ 2,72
- Eggs, 12
- $ 2,28
- Chicken breast, 1 kg
- $ 5,94
- Cheese, 1 kg
- $ 7,24
- Rice, 1 kg
- $ 1,60
- Potatoes, 1 kg
- $ 1,40
- Apples, 1 kg
- $ 3,78
- Coca-Cola / Pepsi, 2 l
- $ 2,80
- Total
- $ 28,9
The same set for every country, so the comparison is fair.
Cost of living across the country
- Rent, 1 bedroom
- $ 230 a month
- Rent, 3 bedrooms
- $ 536 a month
- Utility bills
- $ 182 a month
- Home internet
- $ 51,6 a month
- Monthly transport pass
- $ 23,7 a month
- Single transport ticket
- $ 1,75
- Petrol, litre
- $ 1,15
- Cold medicine
- $ 3,15 for a week
Country averages. City prices, where collected, are shown above and are more precise.
Indicators
- Life expectancy
- 61 years2024
- Homicides
- 1,1 per 100k2017 · data lags behind
- Road deaths
- 24,8 per 100k2021
- Unemployment
- 1,6 %2025
- Unemployment, ages 15–24
- 2,9 %2025
- Inequality (Gini)
- 34,42021 · data lags behind
- Health spending per person
- $ 46,5 a year
- Air pollution, PM2.5
- 39,7 µg/m³2023
- Access to clean water
- 69,6 %2024
- Internet, fixed line
- 38,4 Mbit/s2026
Governance
- Political stability
- below average · -0,4
- Control of corruption
- below average · -0,2
- Rule of law
- below average · -0,4
- Government effectiveness
- below average · -0,2
World Bank estimates on a −2.5 to +2.5 scale, higher is better.
Natural hazards
- Earthquakes
- 0,1 out of 10
- River floods
- 6,7 out of 10
- Coastal floods
- 1,8 out of 10
- Tropical cyclones
- 0 out of 10
- Droughts
- 0,9 out of 10
- Tsunamis
- 0 out of 10
Each value carries the year it refers to. “Data lags behind” means this country's figure was collected noticeably earlier than the rest. Natural hazards use one 0–10 scale and are meant to be compared against each other.
Compare with other countries in the region
Algeria · Angola · Botswana · Burkina Faso · Burundi · Cameroon · Chad · Cote d'Ivoire · Democratic Republic of the Congo · Djibouti · Egypt · Equatorial Guinea · Eritrea · Eswatini · Ethiopia · Gabon · Ghana · Guinea · Guinea-Bissau · Kenya · Lesotho · Liberia · Libya · Madagascar · Malawi · Mali · Mauritania · Morocco · Mozambique · Namibia · Niger · Nigeria · Republic of the Congo · Rwanda · Senegal · Sierra Leone · Somalia · South Africa · South Sudan · Sudan · Tanzania · The Gambia · Togo · Tunisia · Uganda · Zambia · Zimbabwe
Other countries in the region: Africa
Algeria · Angola · Botswana · Burkina Faso · Burundi · Cameroon · Central African Republic · Chad · Cote d'Ivoire · Democratic Republic of the Congo · Djibouti · Egypt · Equatorial Guinea · Eritrea · Eswatini · Ethiopia · Gabon · Ghana · Guinea · Guinea-Bissau · Kenya · Lesotho · Liberia · Libya · Madagascar · Malawi · Mali · Mauritania · Morocco · Mozambique · Namibia · Niger · Nigeria · Republic of the Congo · Rwanda · Senegal · Sierra Leone · Somalia · South Africa · South Sudan · Sudan · Tanzania · The Gambia · Togo · Tunisia · Uganda · Zambia · Zimbabwe