Map of Benin

Benin is located in Africa. Its territory lies in the northern and eastern hemispheres, centred near 9.5° N, 2.2° E. It shares land borders with 4 countries — Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria and Togo — and also has its own coastline. Within Africa, a continent of 54 countries bordered by the Atlantic Ocean and the Indian Ocean, Benin is mapped here in full with its borders, capital and key facts.

Benin shares land frontiers with the following 4 countries. Select any neighbour to open its own map.

Benin covers about 112,622 km² (43,484 sq mi). That makes it the 100th-largest country in the world by area and the 38th-largest in Africa, larger by area than 16 of the continent’s 54 countries.

It is home to a population of roughly 13,224,860, the 78th-largest in the world and the 30th-largest in Africa, accounting for about 0.9% of the continent’s people. With that land area, Benin has an average population density of about 117 people per km². Among the 54 countries of Africa it stands 30th by population and 38th by area.

The seat of government is Porto-Novo, and the official currency is the West African CFA franc (XOF, Fr), and the main official language is French. Traffic drives on the right, and the country observes the time zone UTC+01:00.

Benin carries the ISO country codes BJ and BEN, dials on the international calling code +229 and uses the .bj internet domain.

Benin shares its land borders with 4 countries, each of which is mapped in full on this site. Listed from the most to the least populous, here is how they compare.

Its neighbours are Nigeria (capital Abuja, about 223,800,000 people), Niger (capital Niamey, about 26,312,034 people), Burkina Faso (capital Ouagadougou, about 24,070,553 people) and Togo (capital Lomé, about 8,095,498 people).

By area, Benin is larger than 1 of these neighbours and smaller than 3 of them, which places its size in context along its own frontiers. Open any neighbour above to see its capital, borders and full set of facts on its own map.

The interactive map above is centred on 9.5° N, 2.2° E and opens at zoom level 6, framing Benin within Africa. A marker pin sits at the country’s approximate geographic centre; drag the map or use scroll and pinch to move from a regional overview down to the streets of Porto-Novo. The map is drawn from OpenStreetMap data, the same open dataset used across this site, so place names, roads and coastlines stay consistent from one country to the next.

Benin lies about 1,054 km from the equator, in the northern and eastern hemispheres of the globe. Zoom out to see how its coastline and land borders meet the wider region.

Benin keeps a single standard time zone, UTC+01:00. That figure is the country’s offset from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), the modern reference that for everyday purposes matches Greenwich Mean Time, so local clocks sit +01:00 relative to UTC before any seasonal daylight saving change.

The official currency is the West African CFA franc (XOF, Fr).

The official language is French, which is what appears on signs, documents and many of the place labels you will see on the map.

For practical reference, vehicles drive on the right-hand side of the road, the international dialling code is +229 and websites commonly use the .bj internet domain.

In short, Benin is a coastal country in Africa, sharing land borders with 4 countries. Its capital is Porto-Novo. Benin has a population of about 13,224,860 and covers around 112,622 km² (43,484 sq mi), ranking it 78th in the world by population and 100th by area. The interactive map, facts table and questions on this page bring those details together in one place for Benin.

The flag of Benin features a green vertical band on its hoist side that takes up about two-fifth the width of the field and two equal horizontal bands of yellow and red adjoining the vertical band.

The flag of Benin is shown above as an emoji, rendered by your device’s own font; see it alongside every other nation on the flags of the world page.