Every compound in Benin now has a code

In Benin a delivery often ends with a phone call: “After the pharmacy, the blue gate by the boutique.” From 20 October 2026, every compound in the country, every concession, villa and house, has an N-Ways code: 4,147,741 of them, from Cotonou to Malanville and from Ouidah to Natitingou.

What a code is

A code is the name of your quartier or village and a short number, said in pairs like a phone number. Cadjéhoun · 18 07, a compound in Cotonou, is said “Cadjéhoun, eighteen, zero seven”. Other real codes: Dantokpa · 26 13 by the market, Zogbo · 27 90, Ganvié · 14 20 on the lake, Azali · 12 52 in Abomey, Natitingou · 13 13. The number has four digits, five in the bigger places, said as a pair and a hundred: Porto-Novo · 15 685. The name in the code is never longer than 12 characters and two words, and the full name still works when typed.

The code belongs to the whole compound and leads to its gate, not to the middle of a roof. A concession with several houses, a kitchen and rooms for rent has one code.

In Cotonou, the official address comes first

Cotonou’s 2013 addressing plan named and coded its streets, like “Rue 12.202” (street 202 of the 12th arrondissement), and painted door numbers. Where the State gives an address, it stays the official address, written as the State writes it, and N-Ways shows it first: the street today, the door number as soon as it is known. The N-Ways code sits beside it, to say on the phone and to tell apart the households of a concession that share one gate. When the national addressing programme reaches a town, its addresses come first there too.

One code, one place, in the whole country

Many names repeat: 26 places are called Zongo, 20 Kpodji and 15 Gbèdji. So every place with the same name shares one national range of numbers, one block each. Agata · 15 00 is in Cotonou and Agata · 26 00 in Dangbo, and neither needs its commune after it. Spellings fold together too: Gbèdji and Gbédji, Ouèssè and Wèssè, Haie Vive and Haie-Vive are one name.

On a plate, a parcel or a form it is written simply Cadjéhoun · 18 07. There is nothing else to remember.

How to get yours

Open N-Ways at home and tap Get my code. The app finds the compound you are in and shows its code.
Not at home? Find your compound on the map and tap it, or drop a pin on it.
Share it in one tap, on WhatsApp or by text. Paint it on the gate if you like.

Every code starts provisional and becomes confirmed when the people who live there agree in the app that it is right. A house too new to be on the map gets a code on the spot. Codes never change and are never given to another home.

Get my code

A code for any spot

Every spot in Benin also has a short spot code on a three-metre grid, which works offline: COT 12 · 35G 2PX for Cadjéhoun · 18 07. It serves a stall at Dantokpa, a field in the Borgou or a stilt house in Ganvié.

What a code is not

Not a land title. It proves neither ownership nor the right to occupy a plot, and replaces neither the titre foncier nor the ANDF parcel number.
Not a postcode. La Poste’s P.O. box and Cotonou’s street codes stay what they are.
Not about people. A code describes a place. No names of residents are stored with it.

Open for developers

The model, the engine and the registry of every code are open on GitHub. Couriers, banks, shops and public services can decode codes in their own systems, offline if they need to. The research paper explains every rule, with the mathematics behind it.