The state of business registration in Togo: what 161,828 records reveal
Togo publishes its business register, but nobody reads it whole. We did. We compiled the entire public CFE antériorité file — every enterprise and company on record — into a single dataset of 161,828 businesses, and cross-referenced the 11,678 with full legal filings. What follows is, as far as we know, the first English-language portrait of who actually registers a business in Togo, where, in what legal form, and in which trade.
Only one business in three is a company
The headline number hides a split. Of the 161,828 businesses on the register, just 53,606 (33%) are incorporated companies. The other 108,222 (67%) are sole proprietorships — entreprises individuelles, a single person trading under their own name with no separate legal entity. Togo's formal economy is, numerically, a nation of one-person traders. The company layer on top is smaller than the register's size suggests, and that is the layer that matters for anyone assessing partners, competitors or acquisition targets.
Among companies, the SARL U has taken over
When Togolese founders do incorporate, they overwhelmingly choose two forms — and increasingly the solo variant:
The SARL U — a limited company with a single shareholder — is now the most common company form in Togo, ahead of the classic multi-partner SARL. Together the two account for 88% of all companies. The SA, the form of banks and large firms, is rare: fewer than 600 exist. The takeaway for a foreign founder is simple — the market standard is a SARL or SARL U, and that is almost always the right default. (See our guide to SARL vs SAS in Togo.)
Togo's economy is Lomé, and almost nowhere else
Business registration in Togo is extraordinarily concentrated. 119,191 businesses — 73.7% of the entire register — are in Lomé. Add the capital's suburbs (Agoè, Agoè-Nyivé) and Greater Lomé accounts for well over four in five registered businesses in the country. The rest of Togo — a nation of 8 million — barely registers:
Kara, the second city and a regional capital, has fewer registered businesses than a single Lomé neighbourhood. For anyone planning market entry, the implication is blunt: Togo's addressable formal market is Lomé.
What Togolese businesses actually do
Classifying companies by their stated business object, three sectors dominate — trade, building, and moving things:
Commerce and construction alone are more than half of all incorporated companies — a classic emerging-market profile of import-trade and real-estate. Tech and digital, at 1,287 companies, is still small, but it is a real and countable cohort, not a rounding error.
Companies are thinly capitalised
Among the 11,678 companies with full filings, the median share capital is 1,000,000 CFA francs — about US$1,650. Since OHADA abolished the old minimum, most founders register at or near this floor: 85% of companies with a stated capital sit at 1,000,000 CFA or above, clustering right at it. Share capital in Togo signals intent, not resources; it tells you little about a company's real size. To assess a counterparty, the filings that matter are the manager, the object and the notarial act — all of which sit on the individual company records.
A handful of notaries do most of the work
Every Togolese company is formed by notarial act, and the profession is concentrated. Across the companies we can attribute, a small group of Lomé notaries — led by Mouhamed Tchassona Traoré (363 acts), Justine Komlan-Laodima (260) and Piyaki Assoumanou (259) — account for a large share of all incorporations. For a foreign founder, this is quietly useful: the notary is not a commodity, and the right one moves a dossier through the CFE in days.
Why we built this
We are a registered agent in Lomé, and we maintain the full Togo business register as a free public tool — searchable by name or RCCM number, refreshed several times a day, now with city and sector views. This analysis falls out of that work. If you are assessing a Togolese partner, sizing a market, or deciding where to incorporate, the underlying records are all public and all here.
Forming or checking a company in Togo?
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Methodology: compiled from the Togo CFE public register (antériorité et raison sociale) and published legal announcements, as at 18 July 2026. Counts reflect records on the public register and may include dissolved entities; sector classification is derived from stated business objects. Figures are indicative and refreshed as the register updates. General information, not legal or tax advice.