Muslim Minorities in Southern Cities of Benin and Togo

Muslims in Benin and Togo rarely make international headlines, except when warnings are issued about jihadist groups from the Sahel region encroaching on the Gulf of Guinea. This project moves beyond such narrow security concerns to examine the everyday lives of Muslim minorities in Cotonou, Porto-Novo, and Lomé. Using a combination of archival research and long-term ethnography, it traces the trajectories of these communities from the 1960s to the present day. It explores how living as an internally diverse minority within a Christian-majority environment shapes religious practice, civic engagement and claims to citizenship.

A key finding of this project is that political elites often exploit global terror narratives to neutralise domestic dissent. In Togo, for example, the Faure Gnassingbé regime responded to the anti-government protests of 2017–2018 by pitting state-loyal "good Muslims" against perceived opposition-aligned "bad Muslims". By branding the opposition leader Tikpi Atchadam and his party as "Salafi" radicals, the state exploited Western fears of jihadism to discredit calls for democratic reform (Madore, 2021) .

In neighbouring Benin, Imam Ibrahim Ousmane's controversial election to the National Assembly in 2019 exposed divisions within the Muslim community regarding legitimate representation in a minority context (Madore, 2022) . In both cases, accusations of "radicalisation" are employed as rhetorical weapons in disputes over local leadership and resources, rather than reflecting imported ideologies (Madore, 2022) .

Beyond politics, the project examined the statistical narratives that shape religious life in these countries. While official census data suggests a clear shift from "African traditional religions" to monotheism, a critical analysis of religious categorisation reveals a more complex reality. In Benin, for example, Muslim and Christian identities rarely exist in isolation; they often overlap with long-standing Vodun practices (Madore and Anato, 2026) . By transcending rigid theological boundaries, this research shows that minority status is not just a demographic limitation, but a dynamic space in which believers navigate faith, power and belonging in one of the most religiously diverse areas of West Africa.