Country Profile: Benin

Some Facts and Figures:

• The capital city of Benin is Porto-Novo.
• The population is 9 million.
• With a land size of about 113,000 square kilometres, Benin is about the size of the US state of Pennsylvania, and half the size of the Australian state of Victoria.
• The official language is French, but there are over 50 indigenous languages spoken in the country.
• According to the Joshua Project website, about 44% of Beninese people follow ethnic religions (which includes voodoo). 35% ascribe to some form of Christianity, about 60% of which are Roman Catholic. Syncretism (i.e. combining religions) between ethnic religions and Christianity is very common. About 21% are Muslim.
  

Bibles International in Benin
We are currently working on translating the Bible into the Dendi language of northern Benin. Most of the people in this language group are Muslim. Different resources vary widely on the number of speakers of this language group: one resource says there are about 32,000 speakers (this figure is from 1995); another says 139,000.

The people of Benin need to be able to read the truth of God's Word. Will you pray for our Dendi translation team?