Cotonou

So having a secure architecture to these systems will enable each country to pass out the information they need to pass, right? And also hold on the ones that are needed for them.

But at the end of the day, we should have a summary system that really gives each country indications of the information we need to see, right? The illicit drugs that are passing through the borders, I should be able to know that there was a bus boarded from Cotonou approaching Nigeria, right? So that's what enables us to fight crime holistically and increase surveillance and intelligence and gathering process.

Okay.

But sticking to this thread that you talked about, defense cooperation, global sharing of information, we know that Nigeria has had a longstanding security relationship with the United States.

It's shameful.

Go to Cotonou next door and see what it looks like now.

Their president, their current president is a 49-year-old Harvard graduate.

Go to Cotonou.

It's just thanks to her.

And see the improvement that has taken place.

that there are presences within it that predate us and will outlast us, that the relationship between a human being and those presences is one that carries obligations and rewards in equal measure, and that no matter how far you are carried from the place where you first understood this, no matter how wide the ocean between you and your origin, the water you find on the other side is still inhabited, the spirit followed she always follows because mami water is not fixed to a place she is fixed to the water itself and the water is everywhere in the next segment we return to africa to the living traditions on the continent where she first took shape We will step inside the ceremonies, the shrines, and the intimate personal relationships that define what it means, today, to be a devotee of Mami Water, to be, in the language of her worship, one of her children, Imagine a room built not for living in, but for meeting in.

A small, carefully maintained space, somewhere in the compound of a healer or a priest, in a city neighborhood in Lagos, perhaps, or in a village a few kilometers from the banks of the Volta River in Ghana, or in a back room behind a market stall in Cotonou, Benin.

The floor is swept clean and covered, in some areas, with white cloth.

There is a large vessel, a bowl or a jar or a covered calabash, filled with water and the surface of that water holds flower petals or a few drops of perfume or coins worn smooth by years of handling.

So he says, do you remember me? I said, no.

He said, we met in Kotonu four years ago.

When they told me you were not doing it, I said, I don't care what happens.

Get me this guy for this ad.

Bro, you go LinkedIn, you go see some kind of benefit, and you go, bro, I saw one where... you don't even have HMO for us guys I saw one where they will take your like yearly what's it called yearly vacation and your family is from yeah on your yeah and you they take you abroad right with your family do you like the steady P in some organizations

how much is your fees you want that kind of benefit you don't see where you did work bro you want the axe you want the axe to your your humble office where they take you and your family to vacation at least take me Isaac Abed don't kill me even if it's Kotonu Isaac Abed don't kill me I know you can laugh at Kotonu I had a company that like we used to do like company retreats you know one um one weekend at the beginning of the year even if it was like a resort or a hotel place in like ibarra or something like

yeah like you know some

companies do like retreats i understand that you see companies they didn't even do anything guys that one and the thing is those things actually do help like it helps build relationships you

Around 6,000 producers are engaged in the sector, delivering over 450,000 tons of pineapples each year.

About 100 kilometers from Benin's capital, Cotonou, the fields stretch for miles.

These sweet Beninese pineapples will be on tables thousands of kilometers away in China.

It's the result of years of work, including the 2023 agreements between Cotonou and Beijing.

The successful export of pineapples and the official entry into the Chinese market is the culmination of our joint efforts, from the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding in 2002 to the recognition of Beninese pineapples as safe produce at the China International Import Expo in 2024, right through to the resolution of technical challenges, all of which have made this large-scale deployment possible today.

The launch highlights deepening economic cooperation between the two countries, the most recent one following China's decision to lift custom barriers for many African products.

And in the end of my visit, I, I planned with my friend to come back again and see how we can start to, to, to make a small, small project, uh, to engage some volunteers.

So Ibrahim, who was living in Cotonou, Benin's largest city, started gathering volunteers to make trips with him to Koutamakou to help the Batammariba people.

In 2015, he and his team began working with UNESCO to hold workshops in Koutamakou, where they bring together the different generations to keep the knowledge of building takyenta alive.

We are working with people.