Ganvie
human settlement in Benin
Ganvie is a lake village in Benin, Africa, lying in Lake Nokoué, near Cotonou. With a population of around 20,000 people, it is probably the largest lake village in Africa and is very popular with tourists.
The village was created in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries by the Tofinu people who took to the lake to avoid Fon warriors who were taking people hostage to sell them to European enslavers. Making the shallow waters and islands of Lake Nokoue a haven, the Ganvie villagers are often referred to as "water men" and the area itself is often called the "Venice of Africa."
Originally based on farming, the village's main industries other than tourism are now fishing and fish farming. The only means of transportation to and from the village is through wooden boats.
The village was added to the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List on October 31, 1996 in the Cultural category.
Ganvie, like many areas of Benin, is home to a constituent monarchy.
Etymology
Early Fon people moved pursued by Aja people for slavery. They found refuge in the middle of the lake thanks to deities that protected them. Therefore the place was called 'Ganvie', "I was rescued here" in Fon language.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Ganvie” as human settlement in Benin. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as human settlement in Benin. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1493703. VIAF identifies the subject as 126784558. The Library of Congress control number is n88654766. Authority coordinates are 6.468, 2.391. None of the 3 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1996.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ganvie” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.