BENIN Trends and Developments Contributed by: Nicolin Assogba, D2A SCPA
sector concerned, and they are expected to define objectives, oversee management and draw up the accounts. This upskilling aims to replace the former administrative logic with a business logic. The managing director best embodies this shift. The relationship with the board now rests on a performance contract, which links the term of office to measurable results and makes performance an explicit criterion for remaining in post. The public enterprise thus ceases to be a body managing a service and becomes an entity from which results are expected, in the manner of a private company. This performance logic connects to a wider change in how the state steers public action. Benin has made the evaluation of public policies a principle of govern - ance, and public enterprises are increasingly expected to operate within that culture of measurable objectives and periodic review. The contract that binds the man - aging director is, in that sense, the local expression of a broader move from administering means to manag - ing for results. This professionalisation is accompanied by require - ments of rigour in the exercise of office. The law pro - hibits the combination of office-holder and employ - ee roles, strictly regulates agreements between the enterprise and its officers, and prohibits loans or guar - antees for their benefit. These rules, standard in com - pany law, reflect a determination to prevent conflicts of interest long tolerated in the public sphere. The movement does not, however, erase the public specificity. The state remains present on the board, appointments are still pronounced at the highest level and the supervisory authority retains its role. The gov - ernance of Beninese public enterprises is therefore being built at the meeting point of two requirements – the management autonomy proper to a business and the control proper to a public shareholder – whose bal - ance is one of the principal challenges of the reform. Accountability takes centre stage The second axis of the reform is the requirement of accountability. The 2020 law placed the economic and financial supervision of public enterprises among its objectives, and the institutional framework has grown
accordingly. Within the Court of Audit – the supreme financial jurisdiction that replaced, in 2021, the former Audit Chamber of the Supreme Court – there is now a Chamber for the Control of the Accounts of Public Enterprises, a sign that external control of this portfo - lio is being taken seriously. The Court of Audit’s role is not confined to examining accounts. Sitting in its financial-discipline capacity, it can rule on management faults committed in respect of the state and the bodies subject to its control, which means that those who run public enterprises may answer personally for serious mismanagement. This jurisdictional dimension gives accountability real teeth, beyond the reputational incentive of public rec - ognition. That recognition is itself becoming a tool. Public enterprises are expected to transmit their financial statements regularly and to ensure the quality of their information, and good practices are beginning to be highlighted publicly. A newly created state-owned company was thus singled out as a “champion of accountability” for having transmitted its financial statements on time – an illustration of a new emula - tion around transparency. The stakes go beyond accounting compliance. In a public sector long marked by opacity, accountability is an instrument of credibility: it reassures funders, conditions access to financing and limits the risk of misappropriation. It forms part of a broader policy of evaluating public action that Benin has made a prin - ciple of governance. That said, transparency towards the public remains to be improved. The financial statements of public enter - prises are not disseminated as systematically as those of listed companies, and information on their govern - ance still circulates principally within the state sphere. It is on this ground that the reform will need to make further progress to reach the standards it is aiming for. Sustainability enters the mandate More recently, the reform has incorporated a new dimension: sustainability. In 2025, the government introduced an obligation to take climate change into account in the strategies and planning of public enter -
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