Département de l’Ouémé, Benin — Towns & Travel Guide

What is Département de l’Ouémé known for?

Porto Novo lies within Département de l'Ouémé, which also takes its name from the Ouémé River, and the department is one of the twelve that Benin is divided into. Nine communes make it up. Adjarra, Adjohoun, Aguégués, Akpro-Missérété, Avrankou, Bonou, Dangbo, Porto-Novo and Sèmè-Kpodji each centre one of them.

Where is Département de l’Ouémé?

The Ouémé River gives the department its name. Département de l'Ouémé is one of twelve departments in Benin, and it lies in the tropical band north of the equator, with Porto Novo, the country's capital, inside its boundary. Nine communes divide it.

Adjarra, Adjohoun, Aguégués, Akpro-Missérété, Avrankou, Bonou, Dangbo, Porto-Novo and Sèmè-Kpodji are the principal towns those communes are centred on, and together they carry the department's settled ground. Water and name are tied together here, since the Ouémé River supplies the department's title and the towns of Adjohoun, Bonou and Dangbo sit among the nine centres that share it. The outline is smaller than it was.

In 1999 the northern section of Ouémé was split off to form the department of Plateau, which removed a whole band of territory from the department and left the nine communes that remain. Plateau has been a separate department since. What is left of Ouémé keeps the river name, the capital at Porto Novo and the nine commune centres, which is the working description of the department a traveller meets.

Benin holds twelve of these. Ouémé is the one with the capital in it.

What is Département de l’Ouémé like?

Nine towns carry the department's public life. Each of the nine communes of Département de l'Ouémé is centred on one principal town, so civic life here is distributed across nine named places rather than gathered into a single one. Porto Novo is the exception.

As the capital of Benin it draws national business into Ouémé, which gives one commune a role the other eight do not have. Adjarra and Avrankou answer to the department alone. French is the language of the record.

Administration across Département de l'Ouémé runs in French, from Porto-Novo down to the commune offices at Aguégués, Bonou and Dangbo, and the department's own name reaches a visitor in that spelling first. The river name binds it. Ouémé names both the river and the department named after it, so the same word does duty for a watercourse and for an administrative unit of Benin.

Plateau took part of that identity in 1999. The northern section that became the department of Plateau left Ouémé with nine communes and the capital, and that division is what separates the department's present shape from its earlier one.

What is the history of Département de l’Ouémé?

The map changed in 1999. That year the northern section of Ouémé was split off to form the department of Plateau, reducing the older unit to the nine communes it comprises. Porto Novo stayed.

The capital of Benin remained inside Département de l'Ouémé through the change, and the department kept the name it takes from the Ouémé River, one of twelve such units in the country.

What is the climate of Département de l’Ouémé?

The tropics set the terms here. Département de l'Ouémé lies north of the equator inside the tropical band, which keeps its year free of a cold season and makes the calendar a matter of degree rather than of extremes. The Ouémé River runs through it.

Conditions at Porto-Novo, at Adjohoun and at Sèmè-Kpodji belong to the same tropical department, so a plan made for one commune holds for the others.

How do you get to Département de l’Ouémé?

Porto-Novo is the way in. As the capital of Benin and one of the nine communes of Ouémé, it is the arrival point most routes into the department resolve to. The other eight are reached from there.

Adjarra, Adjohoun, Aguégués, Akpro-Missérété, Avrankou, Bonou, Dangbo and Sèmè-Kpodji are the principal towns onward travel inside Département de l'Ouémé is organised around. Plateau lies beyond the 1999 line.