Togo document photos online

For travellers and traders alike, the most surprising thing about Togo is what it shares with the world by sea. Lomé, the capital, is home to the only natural deep-water port on the entire West African coast - a quay deep enough to berth the largest new-generation container ships without waiting for the tide, something neither Lagos nor Accra can claim. It made tiny Togo a transshipment giant, briefly West Africa's busiest port in 2017. The same coastal hub once produced the legendary 'Nana Benz' - market women so rich from selling Dutch wax cloth they were the only people in the country who could afford a Mercedes-Benz.

• Passport The Togolese passport ranks 75th worldwide on the Henley Passport Index, opening visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to just 57 destinations - most of them fellow West and Central African states.
• Free movement As an ECOWAS member, a Togolese citizen can travel, live and work across 15 West African countries with only a national ID card, no passport or visa required.
• Currency Togo's money, the West African CFA franc, is locked to the euro at a fixed €1 = 655.957 francs - and although it is officially split into 100 centimes, a centime coin has literally never been minted.
• Old money Before joining the CFA franc, Togo had its own currency: Togolese-franc coins were struck from 1924 to 1956, and earlier still the territory spent the German mark under colonial rule.
• New currency The CFA franc is slated to be retired and replaced by a new shared West African currency called the 'eco', with a target launch of 2027.
• Deep-water port Lomé's port is the only natural deep-water harbour on the West African coast, with a quay over 16 metres deep that handles third-generation ships without tidal restrictions.
• Statehood Modern Togo's borders trace back to German Togoland (1884), split between Britain and France after World War I - Togo independent on 27 April 1960, while British Togoland voted to join Ghana.
• Phosphate Despite its small size, Togo ranks among the world's top phosphate producers, the fertiliser mineral whose reserves were unknown when Germany first colonised the land for farming.
• Nana Benz Lomé's wax-cloth trade was so lucrative in the 1970s-80s that it out-earned the national phosphate industry, and its female 'Nana Benz' traders controlled a large share of the entire economy.