Benin
AI behavior law: bot and agent disclosure, crawler and training-data rules, automated-agent transactions, and algorithmic decision-making.
Summary
Benin presents moderate risk. Law No. 2017-20 of April 20, 2018 — the Code du Numérique — is the most comprehensive digital-law instrument in Francophone West Africa, governing e-commerce, electronic signatures, personal data protection (Book V), cybersecurity, and cybercrime (Book VI) in a single omnibus code. Book VI criminalises fraudulent access to or maintenance within a computer system. Book V established the APDP (Autorité de Protection des Données Personnelles) and applies to any collection of personal data including from publicly available sources. No EU-style sui generis database right exists; database protection is compilation-originality only. Benin is an ECOWAS member and has ratified the AU Malabo Convention. The Code du Numérique is relatively modern and better resourced than many peers in the region, though enforcement remains nascent; no web-scraping case law has been identified.
Automated-access legality
Carried forward from the crawler-law index. Governs whether automated clients may access public websites in this jurisdiction.
| Dimension | Value |
|---|---|
| Authorization test | without permission |
| Public-page carve-out | unsettled |
| Terms-of-service browsewrap enforceable | notice dependent |
| Terms-of-service clickwrap enforceable | yes |
| Copyright exception model | fair dealing narrow |
| Text and data mining — commercial status | unsettled |
| Text and data mining — opt-out mechanism | none |
| robots.txt legal weight | non binding notice |
| AI training-specific law | none |
| Privacy regime | Code du Numérique 2017-20, Book V (APDP) |
| Trespass to chattels | not recognized |
Last reviewed: 2026-05-23. Confidence: medium. Not legal advice.