The veteran truck driver still remembers the exhausting overnight journeys across northern Benin, navigating cratered roads and muddy tracks that forced transporters to make long detours through N'Dali. In the rainy season, vehicles became trapped in thick mud. During the dry months, dust clouds swallowed entire convoys.
"We would often arrive at our destination at daybreak," Ibrahim recalls. Today, he makes that same journey in a few hours. "I am in Malanville by 8 p.m. now. I save 8-10 hours on every trip," he says with satisfaction.
For drivers like Ibrahim, the change is more than a matter of comfort. It signals a broader economic transformation reshaping northern Benin, where improved transport infrastructure is reconnecting some of the country's most productive agricultural regions to national and regional markets.
For decades, northern Benin, home to the country's vast cotton-growing belt, endured a striking paradox. Despite producing one of Benin's most valuable export crops, the region remained isolated from major commercial centres such as Cotonou, the economic capital on the Atlantic coast. Many communities were accessible only through deteriorated dirt roads that became nearly impassable during heavy rains. Farmers struggled to move produce to market, transport costs soared, and access to healthcare and other essential services remained difficult.
"Every time I used that road, I had to shower when I got home," says Bakawa Lahana, a trader based in Djougou. For her, going to market was always an ordeal.
To address the challenge, the African Development Bank Group, (AfDB) working alongside the European Union and the Africa Growing Together Fund, co-funded by the AfDB and the People's Bank of China, financed the construction of the 184 km Djougou-Péhunco-Kérou-Banikoara cotton road. The corridor cuts through the heart of Benin's agricultural production zone and represents a cumulative investment of more than €163 million.
But the initiative extends far beyond road paving. The project also includes medically equipped ambulances for surrounding communities, rural feeder roads, water boreholes, markets, and social infrastructure designed to stimulate local development and improve living conditions. At least 219 young people, including 61 women, have received vocational training linked to the project, with some securing paid employment directly on the construction sites.
"From Djougou to Ouassa, it used to take me four hours. Now it takes one," says Ibrahim Amadou, another carrier who extensively uses the Djougou-N'Dali and Djougou-Ouaké routes. The 75 percent reduction in travel time has lowered transport costs, improved delivery schedules and boosted incomes for traders and farmers.
Motorcyclists are also benefitting from safer and more reliable journeys. "I feel safe." says Somaila. "The road is wide, trucks can pass easily, and I ride without any problem." Yet he is quick to add a note of caution: "Even if the road is good, people need to drive carefully. Speed causes accidents."
That growing sense of collective responsibility may prove one of the project's most enduring outcomes. Lahana says residents, particularly women, have become increasingly involved in protecting the infrastructure. Community groups now organise awareness campaigns on road safety and participate in clearing drainage channels to help preserve the road during the rainy season.
"We are committed to preserving this achievement," she says.
As of April 2026, construction works had reached 68 percent physical completion. Most of the remaining work concerns secondary roads and several social infrastructure projects still under development.
Receiving an African Development Bank Group supervision mission recently, residents voiced a common hope: that the momentum generated by the Djougou-N'Dali and Djougou-Ouaké corridors would eventually extend to other areas that are also in need of paved roads.
