Communes of Benin

I have changed the middle two letters of some of the HASC codes in the table so that they will represent the new department to which each commune belongs.

On 1999-01-15, Law No. 97-028 , bearing on the organization of the territorial administration of the Republic of Benin, took effect. The resulting division of Benin consists of twelve départements (departments), subdivided into 77 communes, which in turn are divided into arrondissements and finally into villages or city districts.

By comparison with the status quo ante, the twelve departments are each formed by dividing one of the six old provinces in two, without splitting communes. The communes have the same names and territorial extents, but their status before the new law took effect was sub-prefectures and urban circumscriptions. The arrondissements are the same as the former rural and urban communes, except that in Cotonou, Parakou, and Porto-Novo, some of the former urban communes were grouped together to form arrondissements.

The table below shows all of the second-order subdivisions of Benin. There are many spelling variations to be found. I've tried to ascertain the most common spelling for each name.

Note: The total population is correct, but the individual figures don't add up to the same total. All figures are taken from the Web site of the Ministère du Plan, de la Restructuration Économique et de la Promotion de l'Emploi (Ministry of Planning) of Benin. If the subtotals by department are compared to the population figures for the departments listed elsewhere at that site, it becomes apparent that some of the commune populations must contain errors in one digit. Unfortunately, there's no easy way to tell which figures are wrong.

Other names of subdivisions:

Abomey: Abomé (Portuguese)
Adjarra: Adjara (variant)
Aguégués: Aguégué (variant)
Boukoumbé: Boukombé (variant)
Cobly: Cobli (variant)
Klouékanmè: Klouékanmey (variant)
Sèmè-Kpodji: Sèmè-Podji (variant)