Benin will grant citizenship to descendants of slaves following a law passed in September granting citizenship to anyone who can trace their ancestry back to the slave trade.
The new law, initiated by President Patrice Talon, is part of a broader effort by Benin to confront the role of its complicity in the slave trade.
The law applies to anyone over the age of 18 who does not have the citizenship of another African country and can provide proof that their ancestor was taken through the slave trade from anywhere in sub-Saharan Africa. Benin authorities accept DNA tests, certified testimonies and family records as evidence.
Benin is not the first country to grant citizenship to descendants of slaves. Earlier this month, Ghana did the same for 524 African-Americans after President Nana Akufo-Addo invited them to "come home" in 2019, to mark the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first black slaves in North America in 1619.
But Benin's citizenship law has additional, symbolic significance, in part because of the role Benin played in the slave trade. For more than 200 years, the local rulers of the kingdom of Dahomey captured and sold other blacks as slaves to Portuguese, French and British traders.
It is believed that European traders kidnapped as many as 1,5 million black slaves from the Gulf of Benin, a territory that includes present-day Benin, Togo and part of present-day Nigeria.
The coastal town of Ouidah was one of the most active slave trading ports in Africa in the 18th and 19th centuries. There, close to a million men, women and children were captured, chained and forced onto ships, mostly destined for present-day USA, Brazil and the Caribbean.
Dahomey still exists today, but only as a tribal group, and there are still tribes that were attacked by them. Rumors that President Patris Talon is a descendant of slave traders caused controversy in the 2016 election. Talon himself has never publicly commented on the rumours.
Benin has openly acknowledged its role in the slave trade, a position not shared by other African countries that participated. In 1999, President Matthew Kerreku fell to his knees while visiting a church in Baltimore and apologized to African Americans for Africa's involvement in the slave trade.
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