Local and municipal elections in Benin passed off without evidence of fraud but with some functional problems, the head of a regional observer team said on Wednesday. The leader of the monitors from the Economic Community of West African States singled out in particular the lack of ballot papers and other materials.
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/ 16 February 2008
President George Bush began a five-nation tour of Africa on Saturday that will highlight United States health, education and pro-democracy projects there and also seek to advance efforts to end Kenya’s post-election crisis. Bush, accompanied by his wife Laura, arrived in the small West African state of Benin.
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/ 14 November 2006
Benin is hoping that a five-year, multimillion-dollar grant from the United States under the auspices of the Millennium Challenge Account will finance development projects to reduce poverty, notably through resolving land ownership and credit problems. The government says these funds will allow it to meet enormous economic challenges.
At least 35 people were burned alive and dozens injured overnight in northern Benin when a fuel truck burst into flames while they were stealing petrol, official sources said on Thursday. ”We took 80 people into hospital, of whom 12 died. At the scene, 23 charred bodies have been counted,” Boniface Sambieni, director of the hospital in the nearby town of Tanguieta, told Agence France-Presse.
The impoverished West African nation of Benin was counting votes on Monday after the first round of its presidential election dragged on late into the night under the shadow of fraud claims. Polling, which had been due to end at 4pm on Sunday, was prolonged until past midnight in some areas because of logistical problems.
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/ 6 December 2005
Two years after escaping her African village to find an exciting new life in the big city, Monique lies shrunken, pale and feverish on her hospital death bed, gripped by a killer virus and by denial: ”I’m not a prostitute. I can’t have Aids.” Beside her lies her six-month-old son. Without expensive treatment he won’t long survive her.
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/ 20 January 2005
Border police in the West African country of Benin have rescued 14 boys and a girl who were being smuggled into neighbouring Nigeria for work, a police officer said on Thursday. The boys had been destined for labour in the Abeokuta quarries, just over the border, while the girl would have been employed as a domestic servant.
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/ 20 October 2004
The privatisation of state-owned enterprises is often fraught with difficulties — witness developments at Benin’s National Society for Agricultural Advancement (Sonapra), a cotton-processing firm. Privatisation of the debt-ridden Sonapra began over a year ago in June 2003, but has stalled several times — prompting unions and the media to allege that corruption has taken root in the process.
Border police in Benin have rescued 27 children from traffickers after they attempted to croos the border into neighbouring Togo. Four adults were arrested in what a police officer described as a new war against child smuggling. Most trafficked children are put to work in cocoa or sugar plantations.
The concept of amending Constitutions so that national leaders can remain in office for extended periods of time has come under increasing criticism in recent years. This did not prevent Chadian legislators from voting last month to allow President Idriss Deby to run for a third five-year term in 2006, however. Now there are concerns that this vote might encourage the proponents of similar constitutional reform in Benin.
After difficult negotiations that lasted for almost two years, Benin was finally granted a licence in January to export a variety of locally manufactured goods to the United States, tariff- and quota-free. But, laments Henri Gouthon, president of the National Council of Beninese Exporters, "Benin has nothing to export!"
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/ 26 December 2003
Christmas joy gave way to sorrow in the tiny West African state of Benin when a Boeing 727 loaded with Lebanese families en route to Beirut crashed into the sea upon take-off. Some government sources put the fatalities at 82. ”We have never had to live with such drama in our country,” a bystander said.
Chanting anti-American slogans, thousands in two west African countries marched Tuesday to protest the US and British-led war in Iraq.