Fon

Fon may refer to several related topics, including an ethnic group in West Africa, a language, and a technology company.

The Fon are an ethnic group primarily located in Benin, with communities in southern Togo. They are part of the Gbe language cluster and constitute one of the region’s major groups. The Fon have a long historical presence, notably in the Kingdom of Dahomey, and maintain distinctive cultural traditions, social structures, and religious practices. The Fon diaspora has established communities in urban centers across West Africa and beyond.

Fon, also called Fongbe, is a Gbe language of the Niger-Congo family spoken by the Fon people. It is tonal and uses a Latin-based orthography with diacritics. The language has several dialects and is one of the major languages of Benin. It is related to other Gbe languages such as Ewe and Gen, with some degree of mutual intelligibility.

Fon (company) is a technology company founded in 2006 by Martin Varsavsky that operates a global Wi-Fi sharing network. The business model centers on users installing Fon-branded routers to create public hotspots and sharing a portion of their bandwidth with other Fon users. Through a network of private and public hotspots and various partnerships, the Fon system provides roaming access for members as they travel.