Travel-document planning often starts with a consular detail: where the Embassy of Benin is located, when it is open, and what an application must contain. The embassy’s own pages also describe a transition to online visa and consular services. The country indicators below add demographic, economic, infrastructure, and health context, with each measurement date kept explicit.
Contents
- Embassy contact and opening statistics
- Visa application requirements
- Digital visas and consular services
- Benin population and settlement profile
- Economy, work, and public services
- Environment, connectivity, and civic indicators
- Health and human development measures
Embassy contact and opening statistics
The Embassy of the Republic of Benin in Washington is listed at 2124 Kalorama Road NW, Washington, DC 20008. The Benin Embassy contact page lists two telephone numbers, (202) 232-6656 and (202) 232-2611. Its listed email address is [email protected]. The embassy’s consular card also lists the fax number (202) 265-1996.
The contact page gives a five-day weekly schedule: Monday through Friday. Listed hours are 8:30 AM to 4:30 PM, with a lunch break from 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM. For an in-person visit, that means the published public-facing window is divided by a one-hour midday break; appointment and service-specific instructions should still be checked with the relevant embassy section.
These figures describe the embassy’s published contact details and hours. They are useful for organizing a document visit, but they do not establish processing times, appointment availability, or holiday closures.
Visa application requirements
The Benin Embassy visa requirements page says Americans require a visa to enter Benin. For American applicants, the listed package includes two 2-by-2 passport photographs on a white background, an actual passport, and two copies of the passport information page. The passport must have at least six months of remaining validity and one empty visa page.
The requirements differ for non-American applicants. In addition to the other listed materials, non-Americans must provide two photocopies of a green card or valid U.S. visa. They must also provide two photocopies of a round-trip ticket or itinerary. Those quantities matter: the embassy’s instructions call for two copies in each of these document categories.
Student visa holders have an additional requirement: a registration letter from their school. The letter belongs with the application materials described by the embassy and is specifically associated with student visa status.
| Applicant or visa situation | Quantified or document-specific requirement | Source and period |
|---|---|---|
| American applicant | Two 2-by-2 photos; two passport-information-page copies | Benin Embassy visa requirements; current page instructions |
| American applicant | Passport validity of at least 6 months; one empty visa page | Benin Embassy visa requirements; current page instructions |
| Non-American applicant | Two green-card or valid-U.S.-visa photocopies | Benin Embassy visa requirements; current page instructions |
| Non-American applicant | Two round-trip-ticket or itinerary photocopies | Benin Embassy visa requirements; current page instructions |
| Student visa holder | Registration letter from the school | Benin Embassy visa requirements; current page instructions |
The six-month validity rule appears again in the embassy’s instructions for diplomatic or international-organization applicants seeking an e-visa extension. Keeping the passport-validity threshold visible is especially important because it is a condition of the document package, not an estimate of how long a visa will be issued.
Digital visas and consular services
The Benin Embassy visa page dates the launch of Benin’s secure e-visa platform to April 24, 2018. It says the short-stay visa process was digitalized on April 30, 2018, and that visa applications are now made exclusively online.
The same page identifies exceptions and special handling. Courtesy visas for technical partners, cooperation actors, nongovernmental organizations, charities, and similar groups continue to be issued by embassies and consulates. Diplomatic and international-organization visas remain handled by the embassy for U.S. citizens requesting an extension of the e-visa.
For those extension applicants, the embassy lists one passport-size photo, a copy of the 90-day e-visa, an international certificate of immunization for yellow fever, and a photocopy of a round-trip ticket or itinerary. The passport must have a minimum validity of six months. These requirements apply to the described diplomatic or international-organization case, not automatically to every traveler.
The embassy’s urgent consular services page lists 14 service pages. The menu includes immatriculation consulaire, enrolment in RAVIP, visas, carte consulaire, autorisation parentale, procuration, laissez-passer, passport renewal, certificate of life, birth declaration, signature authentication, residence certificate, and document translation, among other services.
Since November 8, 2024, procuration, laissez-passer, and autorisation parentale have been available online through idiaspora.service-public.bj, according to the embassy page. The listed tariff for those online consular services is 18 U.S. dollars. The same page says a new ambassador presented credentials to President Donald J. Trump on July 24, 2025; that is an embassy-reported event date rather than a measure of service capacity.
Benin population and settlement profile
The World Bank lists Benin’s population at 14,462,724 in 2024 and its population growth rate at 2.5% in 2024. WHO lists 14,111,034 people in 2023, while UNFPA gives a 2023 population figure of 12.8 million. These values refer to different organizations and periods, so they should not be combined into a single growth calculation.
UNFPA’s Benin country programme document reports an area of 114,763 square kilometres. It says women represented 51.2% of the population, children under 15 represented 46.8%, people aged 10 to 24 represented 31.8%, and people over 60 represented 4.3%. The same source reports that migrants represented 2.0% and people with disability 0.9% of the population.
UNFPA reports that 55.4% of the population was rural and 44.6% urban. Its regional breakdown gives 56.6% living in the south, 33.9% in the north, and 7.2% in the center. Those shares describe the source’s geographic categories; they are not a substitute for a current embassy service map.
The UNFPA document reports poverty at 38.5%. It gives fertility of 5.7 children per woman in 2018 and 4.7 in 2021. Fertility was 5.1 children per woman in rural areas, 5.4 among poor women, and 5.2 among non-educated women. The Hills department and Couffo each had fertility of 5.6, while Littoral and Cotonou each had 3.1.
In 2017–2018, 20.1% of girls aged 15–19 had children, according to UNFPA. The adolescent fertility rate was 126.4 per 1,000 among uneducated girls, 110.5 per 1,000 among poor girls, and 88 per 1,000 among rural girls.
Economy, work, and public services
World Bank data put Benin’s 2024 GDP at $21.48 billion, GDP per capita at $1,485.4, and GDP growth at 7.5%. The World Bank reports inflation of 1.2% in 2024. In 2025, it reports net migration of -7,847 and an unemployment rate of 1.6%.
The UNFPA country programme document reports that the economy grew by 7.2% in 2021. It gives an unemployment rate of 2.4% and an underemployment rate of 72.9%, without presenting those figures as the same-year measures as the World Bank indicators above. This distinction is important: unemployment and underemployment capture different labor-market conditions and should not be treated as interchangeable.
The World Bank reports personal remittances received at 1.7% of GDP in 2023. Access to electricity covered 57.0% of the population in 2023. Safely managed sanitation services reached 16% of the population in 2024, while 34% used the internet in 2024. These indicators describe national coverage, not the services available at a particular embassy address or border crossing.
Environment, connectivity, and civic indicators
The World Bank reports forest area at 26.5% of land area in 2023. Annual freshwater withdrawals were 1% of internal resources in 2022. Electricity production from renewable sources excluding hydroelectric power was 0.3% of total electricity production in 2021. Carbon dioxide emissions excluding land use, land-use change, and forestry were 0.5 metric tons per capita in 2024.
The World Bank reports intentional homicides at 1 per 100,000 people in 2017. Because that observation is from 2017, it should not be presented as a current-year safety rate. The World Bank also reports that women held 27% of seats in Benin’s national parliament in 2025.
Benin’s Statistical Performance Indicator overall score was 71.0 in 2024, according to the World Bank. The score is a statistical-system measure; it is not a visa approval rate, embassy performance score, or forecast of future data quality.
WHO classifies Benin in the Africa region and as a lower-middle-income country. WHO reports current health expenditure at 2.58% of GDP in 2021. UNFPA reports a Gini index of 0.418 and an HDI of 0.525 in 2021; it also records HDI rising from 0.364 in 1990 to 0.545 in 2019. These are separate source-year observations and should be read as historical indicators rather than a single latest ranking.
Health and human development measures
UNICEF reports that neonatal mortality fell from 38 to 23 deaths per 1,000 live births between 2014 and 2021. It also reports that under-five mortality fell from 115 to 80 per 1,000 live births over the same period. These are changes across a defined interval, not one-year rates.
UNICEF reports maternal mortality of 391 per 100,000 live births in 2018. The year is explicit because maternal mortality is not a static embassy or travel-document indicator. It belongs alongside, rather than in place of, the World Bank and WHO measures with their own observation years.
For travel-document readers, the most operational figures are the embassy’s Monday-to-Friday schedule, 8:30 AM–4:30 PM hours, one-hour lunch break, six-month passport-validity threshold, one empty visa page, specified copy counts, and the $18 tariff for the three listed online consular services. The country statistics provide broader context while preserving the source, geography, and measurement period for each figure.