Talon, 67, is due to step down next year after completing his second term in office, with elections scheduled for April.<\/p>\n
A businessman known as the “king of cotton”, he first came to power in an election in 2016. He had promised not to seek a third term and had already named a successor.<\/p>\n
The French Embassy has urged its citizens to stay indoors for their safety.<\/p>\n
Benin has been regarded as one of Africa’s more stable democracies. It is the continent’s largest cotton producers, but ranks among the world’s poorest countries.<\/p>\n
This apparent coup in Benin comes just over a week after Umaro Sissoco Embal\u00f3 was overthrown as president in nearby Guinea-Bissau.<\/p>\n
In recent years, there have been several coups in West Africa, including in Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali and Niger, heightening fears that the security of the region could worsen.<\/p>\n
Benin has seen a rise in jihadist activity in recent years, as groups linked to Islamic State and al-Qaeda spread to the south.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Talon, 67, is due to step down next year after completing his second term in office, with elections…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":303062,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-303061","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303061\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}