Benin Company & Beneficial Ownership Directory
Company register search for 5,721 Benin companies, plus shareholder, officer and beneficial ownership records sourced directly from official government registries.
Benin company register data is filed on the Registre du Commerce et du Crédit Mobilier (RCCM, Trade and Personal Property Credit Register), created under the OHADA Uniform Act on General Commercial Law and held at the Tribunal de Commerce de Cotonou, with access largely in-person and paper-based rather than searchable online. None could be confirmed: the OHADA framework itself does not mandate a separate UBO registry, and no specific Beninese decree establishing one, together with its ownership threshold or access rules, is published in verifiable form. Ownership beyond the RCCM's formation-stage filing currently has no confirmed central beneficial-ownership database to draw from.
Benin beneficial ownership guideTop Companies in Benin
Live from the register. Every row opens the full record — officers, shareholders and resolved group structure.
Data Coverage
Record counts by data layer for Benin, as of the last reconciliation.
Analysis
What this data actually tells you about Benin
Benin’s economy has been one of West Africa’s fastest-growing in recent years. According to the national statistics institute (INStaD), real GDP growth reached 7.5% in 2024 and accelerated to 8.1% in 2025 — the strongest pace since 1990 — with quarterly growth of 7.4%, 7.6%, 8.8% and 8.3% across the four quarters of 2025. Growth was driven mainly by public works (+9.8%), textiles (+9.3%) and agribusiness (+8.4%) on the production side. Nominal GDP was estimated at roughly $24.6 billion in 2025, with GDP per capita around $1,630-1,660. Inflation stayed very low, at 1.1% in 2025 versus 1.2% in 2024, well below the UEMOA convergence ceiling. The economy uses the CFA franc (XOF), pegged at a fixed rate of 655.957 XOF to 1 euro, shared across the eight-member UEMOA/WAEMU. Benin’s fiscal deficit reached the WAEMU norm of 3% of GDP in 2024 (a year ahead of its IMF program schedule) and was targeted at 2.9% of GDP for 2025, with AfDB’s July 2026 report projecting a further decline to about 2.6% of GDP in 2026. The economy remains structurally dependent on agriculture (chiefly cotton) and re-export/transit trade through the Port of Cotonou, though the government’s industrialization push is visibly shifting the growth mix toward manufacturing and services. Counterparties verify a specific counterparty’s actual current growth and fiscal exposure directly rather than assume the exceptional 2024-2025 growth pace continues indefinitely.
Cotton remains Benin’s signature export commodity: production for the 2024/2025 season was estimated at about 669,000 tons, and cotton exports were valued at roughly $525.7 million in 2024. In a major policy shift, Benin banned exports of raw (unprocessed) cotton effective May 2025 to force more local processing. Cashew is the second major agricultural export: the 2024/2025 harvest was projected at about 225,000 tons, up 11.9% from the prior season, after a similar April 2024 ban on raw cashew exports. The centerpiece of industrial policy is the Glo-Djigbé Industrial Zone (GDIZ), a public-private partnership targeting at least $1.4 billion of first-phase investment and roughly 300,000 jobs by 2030; as of 2025 it had mobilized over €1.3 billion, created 16,000 direct textile jobs, and reached processing capacity of 40,000 tonnes of cotton fiber and up to 24 million garments annually, with buyers including KIABI, H&M and US Polo Association, and FIFA selecting the zone to help produce kits for the 2026 World Cup. The Port of Cotonou remains a vital transit outlet for landlocked Niger; Benin is a member of ECOWAS and UEMOA. Nigeria reopened the Tsamiya border corridor with Benin in 2024 after a seven-year closure, and both countries launched a joint digital transit-tracking system (SIGMAT) in May 2025. FDI stock stood at about $3.71 billion, with leading investor countries France, India, China, Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire. Counterparties verify a specific counterparty’s current GDIZ participation and cross-border trade-corridor exposure directly.
Benin’s population was estimated at about 14.2 million in 2025. Labor force participation reached 75.68% in 2024, but more than 90% of jobs remain informal, and underemployment affected an estimated 72% of the labor force; official unemployment is reported at under 3%, a figure that masks widespread informality rather than genuine full employment. On security, northern Benin has faced a spillover jihadist insurgency since late 2021, involving the al-Qaeda-linked JNIM and, to a lesser extent, Islamic State Sahel Province and the Lakurawa group. Attacks intensified through 2025: a January 8, 2025 assault near the Mékrou River killed at least 35 soldiers; an April 2025 attack killed 54 soldiers; twin attacks at Wara and Bessassi occurred on the night of October 4-5, 2025; and a March 2026 attack on an army base killed 15 soldiers. Total insurgency-linked deaths in Benin were estimated at around 575 for 2025. On the political front, a new constitution was adopted in December 2025 introducing tighter electoral thresholds; the largest opposition party, Les Démocrates, subsequently forfeited its 28 of 109 parliamentary seats following the January 2026 legislative elections, and the ruling coalition’s candidate, Romuald Wadagni, won the April 2026 presidential election with 94.05% of the vote after the Constitutional Court approved only two candidates to stand. Counterparties verify a specific counterparty’s actual current security exposure in northern Benin and political-transition-linked risk directly rather than assume conditions are fully stable.
Benin company base, broken down
Charts render from live counts. Where coverage is partial, the excluded population is stated on the chart.
Company size, by disclosed headcount
By number of employees on file. Entities with no disclosed headcount are not counted in any band.
Enterprises by size category
From Benin’s third General Census of Enterprises (RGE3), conducted by INStaD (preliminary report published 2023/2024): the census counted 252,155 economic units in 2023, up 62.2% from 154,839 in 2008; the informality rate fell from 97.0% (2008) to 85.9% (2023), with 78.5% of enumerated units concentrated in the tertiary sector (trade and handicrafts). This is a genuine, dated informal-versus-formal split rather than an SME-versus-large-enterprise breakdown — no dated statistic on Benin’s SME/large-enterprise split by size specifically was found. A foreign-ownership share figure is deliberately omitted: no genuine, dated statistic on the share of foreign-owned companies in Benin could be located despite multiple targeted searches. Source: .
Who uses Benin ownership data
The three checks this page's data is most often run for.
KYB onboarding
Verifying a Benin counterparty means confirming the beneficial owner behind the entity and evidencing where that answer came from, not just pulling the registered name.
AML and sanctions screening
Sanctions exposure often sits above the operating company, in a holding layer registered elsewhere. Screening the local entity alone will not surface it; screening the resolved ownership chain will.
Supplier and credit risk
Filed accounts cover a limited share of the register in most jurisdictions, so group membership is often a better solvency signal than a standalone balance sheet.
Get complete shareholder and officer records, ultimate beneficial owner resolution, and ongoing ownership monitoring for Benin companies — via API or a bulk data feed.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many registered Benin businesses does Zavia track?
Zavia holds 5,721 company records for Benin, of which 5,720 (100%) are currently active on the register.
Can I look up the beneficial owner of a Benin company?
Benin company register data is filed on the Registre du Commerce et du Crédit Mobilier (RCCM, Trade and Personal Property Credit Register), created under the OHADA Uniform Act on General Commercial Law and held at the Tribunal de Commerce de Cotonou, with access largely in-person and paper-based rather than searchable online. None could be confirmed: the OHADA framework itself does not mandate a separate UBO registry, and no specific Beninese decree establishing one, together with its ownership threshold or access rules, is published in verifiable form. Ownership beyond the RCCM's formation-stage filing currently has no confirmed central beneficial-ownership database to draw from.
Is shareholder data available for Benin companies on Zavia?
Yes. Zavia holds 0 shareholder records for Benin companies, with 75 ultimate parent relationships resolved for group-structure and ownership-chain mapping.
Is there a bulk or API option for Benin company data?
Yes. Zavia's API connects directly to official government ownership registries across 195 countries and territories, including Benin, so company registration, shareholder, UBO, officer, and group-structure records can be queried programmatically instead of browsed one page at a time.
Does Zavia have a deeper guide on Benin company ownership?
Zavia's Benin beneficial ownership guide covers the register, the UBO threshold, and how to verify a company's ownership chain in more depth than this directory page.