Borgou Department
Borgou is Benin's cotton heartland: two-thirds of farmers grow cotton while 41% of households raise livestock, creating farmer-herder tensions.
Borgou Department operates as the beating heart of Benin's cotton economy, where two-thirds of farmers grow the crop that provides 35% of national export revenue and employs 30% of the workforce. This concentration creates a monoculture vulnerability characteristic of ecosystems optimized for single outputs—when cotton prices collapse or pests surge, the entire regional economy feels the shock. Yet the same specialization generates scale efficiencies that maintain competitiveness.
Livestock provides essential diversification. Approximately 41% of Borgou households depend on pastoral activities, holding 31.77% of national cattle population. The coexistence of cotton farming and cattle raising creates complex land-use dynamics—farmers and herders compete for space in ways that occasionally turn violent, a conflict pattern common across the Sahel. Traditional exchange agreements once created mutualism (farmers provided crop residues; herders provided manure and draft power), but urbanization and population pressure have degraded these relationships.
The department contains some of Benin's largest farmland plots, an inheritance from colonial-era development that concentrated cotton production. Infrastructure includes the LCB cotton ginnery in neighboring Zou and SEICB in Collines, processing facilities that prevent raw cotton from leaving the region entirely unprocessed. Whether Borgou can maintain agricultural dominance while managing farmer-herder tensions and building resilience against cotton price volatility will define its development trajectory.