Parakou is the capital of the Borgou department and, after Cotonou and Porto-Novo, the third largest city in the country. It is a cosmopolitan commercial crossroads. Trucks come to load goods at the railway station, and then head for Burkina and Niger because the railway line that was supposed to extend to Niger finally stopped at Parakou. Bush cabs also provide a link to these landlocked countries. In the Dendi language, Parakou means "everyone's city". This seems coherent. Since the creation of the Bariba kingdom of Parakou by Kobourou Akpaki, son of a Bariba prince from Nikki and a Yoruba woman from Savé, the city has had a reputation of tolerance towards the peoples who come to settle there (Yoruba, Bariba, Hausa, Dendi and Fulani), a tolerance that is very beneficial for regional trade. Similarly, when the French arrived in Parakou in 1894, the king established friendly relations with them and refused to participate in the revolt of the other Bariba kingdoms. By 2022, construction was numerous and the city was beginning to regain a certain dynamism.

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