Colette Sénami Agossou Houeto

Colette Sénami Agossou Houeto was born on 6 March 1939 in Porto-Novo, Ouémé Department, Benin. She attended local primary schools and secondary school in Cotonou. She studied at the University of Strasbourg and at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, and La Nouvelle Tribune also records study at Aix-en-Provence. After returning home she became a certified teacher of German.

From 1977 to 1981 Houeto directed the National Institute for Training and Research in Education (INFRE) in Benin. She wrote on education, mass media, and women in African tradition, and published the poetry collection L'aube sur les cactus in 1981. Between 1986 and 1991 she worked with the African Development Bank to integrate women into Benin's development programs; Benin Web TV also reports UNICEF education work. In April 2006 President Boni Yayi appointed her Minister of Primary and Secondary Education; she left the cabinet in August 2006. She was active in the Democratic Renewal Party of Adrien Houngbédji. Benin Web TV states that she served as first deputy mayor of Porto-Novo from 2008 to 2015. She held the rank of Commander of the National Order of Benin.

Alongside administration and politics, Houeto was known as a feminist poet and essayist. Her published work includes L'aube sur les cactus (1981), essays in Présence Africaine, contributions on women and education in Benin, and participation in collective volumes on women in African tradition. Detailed family information was not set out in the English Wikipedia entry or the October 2026 news obituaries used for this page.

Colette Sénami Agossou Houeto died on 29 September 2026 at the age of 87. Benin Web TV and La Nouvelle Tribune reported the death in early October 2026. Those accounts did not publish a specific medical cause or a detailed place of death beyond her identification as a Beninese national figure from Porto-Novo.

Houeto is remembered in Benin as an educator-turned-minister, a poet of feminist and anti-colonial themes, and a public servant who linked women's participation to development policy through the African Development Bank and local government in Porto-Novo. The Ministry of Maternal and Primary Education has listed her among former leaders of the education portfolio, and reference works such as the Historical Dictionary of Benin record her ministerial and literary roles.