Benin offers citizenship to African diaspora, with help from Spike Lee


Isaline Attely, an Afro-descendant from Martinique, receives her certificate of Beninese nationality during a naturalisation ceremony in Cotonou, Benin December 27, 2025. REUTERS/Charles Tossou Placide

OUIDAH, Benin, Jan 14 (Reuters) - Isaline Attelly, a native of the ‌Caribbean island of Martinique, had been living in Benin for nearly a year before she learned that her family's connection to the West African country went ‌back much further.

Genealogical records confirmed her great-grandmother on her mother's side was born in what is now Benin and, at the height of transatlantic ‌slavery, was trafficked across the Atlantic Ocean.

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