🇧🇯 The colours of Benin
National colours.
Benin’s flag uses green, yellow, and red, each with its own meaning: green for hope, yellow for the nation’s riches, and red for ancestral courage. These colours also connect Benin to the wider Pan-African movement and honour Ethiopia’s independence.
Where no official value is given, the swatch shows the colour family, not the exact shade.
- Green stands for hope, yellow for riches, red for ancestral courage.
- The flag’s colours are linked to Pan-Africanism.
- Benin’s flag honours Ethiopia as Africa’s oldest independent country.
- The Marxist-era flag was never made official by law.
- The original flag was restored in 1990 after the end of the Marxist regime.
The colours of the flag of Benin
Benin’s flag is made up of three colours: green, yellow, and red. The green vertical band sits at the hoist (the side nearest the flagpole), while two horizontal bands of yellow and red fill the rest. According to the national anthem, green stands for hope in a new democracy, yellow symbolises the country’s wealth, and red represents the bravery of those who came before. These meanings are officially stated. The flag’s colours also reflect the Pan-African movement, linking Benin to other African nations that share similar ideals.
How the colours were chosen of Benin
When Benin was under French colonial rule as Dahomey, it was not allowed its own flag, as the French feared it would encourage independence. After gaining autonomy in 1958, Dahomey chose its own flag in 1959, keeping it after independence in 1960. In 1975, a Marxist government replaced it with a green flag featuring a red star, but this version was never made official by law. The original flag returned in 1990 after the end of the Marxist regime and the return to democracy.
Official shades and rules of Benin
The sources do not specify official shades or proportions for Benin’s flag colours. The arrangement is described: green at the hoist, yellow and red as horizontal bands. No further details on exact colour codes or usage rules are provided.
The facts in this overview come from the Wikipedia article "Flag of Benin", written by its contributors and used under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence. Rang rewrote the text in its own words, with AI assistance, and compares every page with the article to make sure no passage is copied. It may be reused under the same CC BY-SA 4.0 licence with a link back.
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