Benin – national flag
Benin National Flag, The flag dates from 1960 and contains the Pan-African colors, which in Benin’s case are also given the importance of green for hope, yellow for the country’s wealth and red for ancestral bravery. During the 1975 Marxist regime, the flag was completely green with a red star on the upper left, but with the fall of the one-party regime in 1990, the old flag was reintroduced.
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Benin – history
According to a2zgov, Benin history, In approximately In 1625, the fon people established the kingdom of Abomey in present-day Benin, and it subsequently came to form the nucleus of the kingdom of Dahomey, which in 1720 reached the coastline of present-day Benin. Abomey was subject to the much larger Yoruba kingdom of Oyo in present-day Nigeria. However, the expansion of the Dahome Empire led to constant conflicts with Yoruba as Dahomey acquired slaves from there. The slave trade was during the 1700’s. became a central source of income for the Dahome kingdom, which had contacts with the European slave traders who had built forts on the coast, which would later become known as the Slave Coast.
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Despite protests and opposition from local kings, in 1892 France made Dahomey a protectorate. In 1894, Dahomey changed its status to a colony and the following year it was incorporated into French West Africa. Dahomey bordered on the German Togoland and British Nigeria and therefore had strategic rather than economic significance for France. Thus, economically, the area gained little out of colonial rule, but a few phonics gained positions within the colony administration.
Dahomey gained independence on 1.8.1960. Hubert Maga became the country’s first president, but was toppled by a coup in October 1963. Colonel Christophe Soglo became the new head of state until the January 1964 election, when Sorou-Mighan Apithy (1913-89) was elected president. In November 1965, however, Soglo forced Apithy to resign as a result of unrest in the north. After just two years in power, Soglo was overthrown and a number of weak military regimes tried in vain to solve the country’s regional problems. In October 1972 Major Mathieu Kérékou took power and created a radical Marxist military council.
In 1975, Dahomey changed its name to the People’s Republic of Benin and officially became a one-party state. Relations with France deteriorated and military cooperation ceased. French mercenaries’ failed attempt to overthrow Kérékou in 1977 only made matters worse. Only with François Mitterrand’s election victory in France in 1981 did things improve. Economic problems, including Due to Nigeria’s closure of the border in 1984, Kérékou forced to approach the West. Coup attempts, strikes, and student unrest in the late 1980’s led him to write off Marxist ideology and plan economics and introduce multi-party rule. In the 1991 election, Prime Minister Nicéphore Soglo wonover Kérékou, and in June 1992, after hard negotiations, Soglo succeeded in forming a coalition with 34 members of the National Assembly. However, the coalition split in the fall of 1993. Political events in Benin in the mid-1990’s were characterized as a “civil coup” and a pattern of transition from one-party socialism to democracy.
Ahmed Kérékou returned to the post of presidential victory over Nicéphore Soglo in 1996. Soglo’s party, the Renaissance du Bénin, became the country’s absolute largest in the 1999 National Assembly elections. However, the course of the election triggered strong criticism from the opposition, including from Nicéphore Soglo, who withdrew from the second round of elections. However, with the 2006 election of Thomas Boni Yayi as new president, the process of democratization that Benin has undergone successfully and with great international recognition was reaffirmed. Boni Yayi was re-elected in 2011.
A border dispute with neighboring Niger over islands in the Niger River was brought before the International Court of Justice in The Hague in 2000. In addition, there have been minor border disputes with Burkina Faso in the north. In 2005, Benin received thousands of refugees from the politically troubled Togo to the west.
Benin has experienced relatively high economic growth in recent years, and the country also benefits from the G8 countries’ debt reduction decision in 2005. However, Benin remains one of the world’s poorest countries.
In mid-2007, much of Africa, including Benin, was hit by heavy floods due to rain, and a large number of villages in the southern part of the country were washed away. Again in 2010, the country was hit by floods.