Benin’s government has secured a 200-million-dollar loan from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank to overhaul the transport network of Greater Nokoué, the country’s largest urban region, in a plan that will influence how West African cities handle congestion, pollution and the future of informal transport.
The financing, approved this week and paired with support from the World Bank’s International Development Association, will fund a multimodal system that seeks to answer who moves, how they move, and why mobility now sits at the centre of Benin’s sustainable development strategy.
The project, known as the Greater Nokoué Sustainable Urban Mobility Programme, comes at a moment when the region’s roads and waterways struggle under the weight of rapid urban growth. Greater Nokoué, covering Cotonou, Porto-Novo, Sèmè-Kpodji and Abomey-Calavi, already hosts about 2.6 million residents, nearly one in every five Beninese.
Its economic output—more than a third of national GDP, depends on daily flows of workers, goods and raw materials. Yet most of those movements occur on inconsistent road networks, dominated by small motorbikes, ageing minibuses and unregulated taxis that compete for space with freight vehicles and pedestrians.
The authorities expect the region’s population to reach three million within five years. Without intervention, the current pattern of long travel times, frequent accidents and air thick with exhaust fumes could harden into a permanent barrier to growth.
Similar pressures are visible across African cities, where urbanisation often outpaces investment; in Lagos, for instance, traffic delays cost an estimated 1.5 billion dollars in lost productivity each year, while Nairobi’s air-pollution levels regularly exceed global health thresholds. Benin’s attempt to build a coordinated system places it among countries exploring how mobility reform can unlock economic efficiency.
At the heart of the programme is the effort to knit together different modes of travel so residents can shift more easily between buses, roads and waterways. The new loan will fund upgrades to major corridors, bus infrastructure and digital traffic-management tools that can reduce the stop-and-go patterns driving much of Cotonou’s emissions.
The plan extends to the lagoon, where improved docking points and passenger facilities could ease movement between the dispersed communities that line the waterways linking the capital to neighbouring towns.
But the project touches an even more sensitive dimension: the role of informal transport workers. In Greater Nokoué, thousands of motorcycle-taxi drivers, known as Zémidjans, and minibus operators, commonly called Tokpa Tokpa, form the backbone of daily commuting. They account for the majority of short-distance trips and serve areas where no formal bus service exists.
Any attempt to modernize transport risks sidelining them, yet their involvement is essential for the system to function. The programme therefore includes training for operators, as well as a gradual shift toward electric motorbikes that could cut fuel consumption and improve health outcomes for riders and passengers.
Air-quality concerns make this shift urgent. Much of Benin’s fuel enters the country through informal routes from Nigeria, where adulteration and substandard refining result in petrol with high sulphur content.
Studies referenced by the World Bank show particulate-matter levels in parts of Cotonou reaching up to four times the threshold considered safe by international health agencies. In a coastal city where sea breezes once dispersed pollution naturally, the rising density of vehicles has outpaced the environment’s ability to cope.
What happens in Benin will be watched closely by other African governments weighing the cost of new infrastructure against the realities of strained public budgets. The 200-million-dollar loan is modest compared with the transport needs of larger economies, yet it represents a test of whether medium-sized cities can steer toward sustainability before gridlock becomes irreversible.
If the system succeeds in cutting travel times, cleaning the air and accommodating informal operators rather than displacing them, it could offer a template for cities from Abidjan to Dar es Salaam.
For now, the work begins with digging, dredging, new buses and patient coordination among agencies that have not always operated in sync.
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