COTONOU: Like many vendors, Odette Adigbe is full of fear about the looming relocation of the massive Dantokpa market, one of the largest in West Africa, at the heart of Benin’s economic capital Cotonou.

The Beninese government has decided to remove the 19 hectare (47 acre) open-air market over poor sanitation and safety concerns. Instead, it plans to spread out its stalls across 35 new markets under construction in and around Cotonou by 2026. "Our fear with the new sites that we are being offered, is that if we move we will lose our customers,” Adigbe, 56, said, behind her oil and vegetable stall. While the authorities have yet to announce a date for the move, traders know their days are numbered at Dantokpa.

The market has been hit by a string of blazes that firefighters struggled to control. The decay and destitution of the market, which reeks of sewage, compelled Benin authorities to launch a renovation project.

"The squalor issue is not the problem. The market was already in this condition when I began working there 20 years ago,” said Adigbe. "If it is a squalor issue, we can take sanitation measures instead of kicking us out by force,” she argued.

‘Patron deity’

Mahougnon Aguemon Amzat, an elected official for the district where the market is located, has tried to reassure the hawkers. "I’m not advocating for relocation, I’m advocating for the fulfillment of customers and the market’s sellers,” he said.

He praised the merits of the new locations, which he said are more spacious and better equipped, with adequate infrastructure. But some hawkers deplore that no official has come by to inform them of the plan.

"We know that they built a market in Akassato and we have been hearing that people will join the site. But who and in what conditions, no one knows,” said Edith Agassin, in her 50s, referring to a town north of Cotonou.

For Brigitte Akloue Mahoutin, who has sold poultry in Dantokpa for more than four decades, moving means business could dwindle further. "Here, we already struggle with sales, so imagine if we are forced to move to the new site,” said the 60-year-old.

But among the merchants’ most dreaded repercussions is losing the protection of Dan—the animist deity embodied by a snake who watches over the market and brings it customers. "We cannot leave the patron deity of the market and everything that is on site to facilitate business and rush to set up elsewhere,” Nafissatou Abayomi said.

Ainadou Abohangbe Kanai, the high priestess of Dan, eased the traders’ concerns. "The vendors have nothing to fear,” she said. They just need to "consult the oracle” to establish which patron the new markets should be placed under. 

Environmental benefit

"Out of the 20 markets that have already been built, around 30,000 spots are available to be allocated to traders,” said Eunice Loisel Kiniffo, director of the National Agency of Market Management. The massive market makes a key contribution to the Beninese economy, but the huge concentration of businesses needs to be changed, economic expert Come Gangbe said.

Yet, the transformation will not come without consequences, Gangbe warned. "It will take time for things to gel. There will be a transitional period... These women know they have to prepare for that,” he said.

Relocating the port city’s iconic market will also benefit the environment, risk and disaster management expert Didier Hubert Madafime said. "If we manage to move the market, it will be good for the lagoon,” Madafime said. The market has polluted the coastal lagoon, endangering Benin’s largest city in the Gulf of Guinea, and its 1.2 million people, he said. — AFP