Zou Department, Benin — Towns & Travel Guide

What is Zou Department known for?

Zou Department carries the name of the Zou River, which travels through it before emptying into the Atlantic, and Abomey sits at the head of nine communes that share the department between them. Bohicon is among them. So are Agbangnizoun, Cové, Djidja, Ouinhi, Za-Kpota, Zangnanado and Zogbodomey, the principal towns the department's communes are centred on.

Where is Zou Department?

The Zou River runs through the department. It travels across Zou Department and empties into the Atlantic, and the department that took its name is one of the twelve into which Benin is divided. Abomey is its capital.

Around that town the department is divided into nine communes, centred on Abomey, Agbangnizoun, Bohicon, Cové, Djidja, Ouinhi, Za-Kpota, Zangnanado and Zogbodomey, which between them account for the settled ground. The band is tropical, north of the equator. Water is the naming principle here, not relief: the record names the Zou River and the Atlantic it reaches, and nothing else in the way of terrain.

The department used to be larger. Zou was split in two in 1999, and the northern territory passed to Collines Department, which was created at that moment and left the older unit with nine communes. Collines took the north.

What stayed with Zou Department is the ground around Abomey and Bohicon, the stretch the Zou River crosses on its way to the Atlantic, and the departmental capital did not move. Twelve departments remain in Benin. Zou is one, reduced by the split but still named for the river that crosses it.

What is Zou Department like?

Abomey anchors the department. As the capital of Zou Department it holds the offices that the other eight commune centres answer to, and it is the first of the principal towns the department's communes are centred on. Bohicon and Cové follow.

Agbangnizoun, Djidja, Ouinhi, Za-Kpota, Zangnanado and Zogbodomey complete the set of nine, each a commune centre with its own share of the department's daily business. That spread is the department's shape. French carries the administration.

Every commune of Zou Department works in French, from Abomey to Zogbodomey, and it is the language in which the department's own name and the Zou River's are written down. The name outlasted the split. When the northern territory left for Collines Department in 1999, the Zou name stayed with the remaining half, because the river it refers to keeps crossing that half on its way to the Atlantic.

Collines took a name of its own. The nine communes came through the reorganisation intact, and Bohicon, Cové and Djidja remained inside Zou rather than crossing into Collines Department. Zou kept its river and its capital at Abomey, and that is the identity the department has carried since.

What is the history of Zou Department?

Abomey has been the capital throughout. Zou Department was split in two in 1999, its northern territory going to Collines Department, and the older unit kept Abomey along with the nine communes that remain in it. The river name predates the line.

Zou is called after the Zou River, which crosses the department on its way to the Atlantic, so the department's title survives a redrawing that took away part of its ground.

What is the climate of Zou Department?

The Atlantic lies at the river's end. Zou Department sits north of the equator in the tropical band, and the Zou River carries its water down to that ocean through a department whose year has no cold season. Abomey and Bohicon share it.

No commune of Zou keeps a separate calendar, so plans made for Cové or Zangnanado hold as well at Djidja.

How do you get to Zou Department?

Abomey is the address. The capital of Zou Department is where routes into the department resolve, and Bohicon is the other commune centre a traveller is likely to pass, both of them among the nine principal towns. Collines Department begins past the old line.

Anyone continuing beyond Zou crosses into the territory transferred in 1999, and the Zou River runs on toward the Atlantic regardless.