Tag: Benin

Other Notes on West Africa

Published on by John Doe29 Comments

I’ve written about Nigeria, Benin, The Gambia, Mauritania, Ghana, Guinea, and the Ivory Coast in West Africa. I also traveled to Togo, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea-Bissau, Senegal, and Mali, but I don’t think I have enough interesting things to say about each one to justify a full post. So I’m going to do a quick, bullet-point summary of notes on all these leftover countries in one essay. But first, I’ll go over some bigger West African trends that I couldn’t figure out how to fit into individual country entries.

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Notes on Benin

Published on by John Doe22 Comments

I travelled through Benin for about 12 days, visiting Cotonou, Porto Novo, Abomey, Ouidah, and Grand Popo. I spent a decent chunk of my time there writing about Nigeria, so I didn’t dig into Benin quite as much and this piece will be shorter than others.

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Notes on Nigeria

Published on by John Doe86 Comments

I want to thank Chris Quintero for all his help on my Nigeria/West Africa trip. If you’re interested in going to Nigeria, definitely check out his guide.

I spent 12 days in Nigeria, and saw the cities of Lagos, Kano, Ibadan, and Abeokuta. Even compared to my other travel writing, I have barely scratched the surface of Nigeria, but these are my notes on what I saw and various historical rabbit holes I went down.

My first big secondary source is Martin Meredith’s The Fate of Africa: A History of the Continent Since Independence, which gives a phenomenal overview of a huge topic with exactly the right amount of summary and detail.

My other big secondary source is Dictatorland: The Men Who Stole Africa by Paul Kenyon which is narrower in scope, but somehow even better at storytelling history.

I also want to give a special thanks to the people who hosted me in Lagos and the person who connected me to them. The trip wouldn’t have been possible without them.

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