Niger

• 1. Introduction

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  Niger is a landlocked country in West Africa, and more than 80 percent of its land lies in the Sahara. Yet it takes its name from a river, and nobody can say for certain where the river's name came from.

  The geographer Ptolemy described a wadi called the Gir, in what is now Algeria, and a Ni-Gir farther south. The second may be the Niger River. The modern spelling first appears in 1550, written by the Berber scholar Leo Africanus. He may have drawn it from a Tuareg phrase. Linguists broadly agree that it does not come from the Latin word niger, as people once wrongly believed.

  A country with an uncertain name has a past that is easy to underestimate. Who lived here when the desert was green? Which empires reached across the sand, and what happened when French soldiers arrived? Why has independence brought so many coups? And how do millions of people build lives on land this dry?

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• 2. The Green Sahara

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  Stone tools from Adrar Bous, Bilma and Djado, in the northern Agadez Region, date back as far as 280,000 BC. Some have been linked to the Aterian and Mousterian toolmaking cultures of the Middle Paleolithic. Those cultures flourished across northern Africa from about 90,000 BC to 20,000 BC. The people who made the tools are thought to have lived as hunter-gatherers.

  Archaeologists use the name Green Sahara for a wetter, more fertile age within the prehistoric African humid period. Conditions then favoured hunting and, later, farming and cattle herding.

  Around 10,000 BC the Neolithic era began. Pottery appears at Tagalagal, Temet and Tin Ouffadene, cattle husbandry spread, and the dead were buried beneath stone mounds called tumuli. The Kiffian culture, from about 8000 to 6000 BC, and the later Tenerian, from about 5000 to 2500 BC, centred on Adrar Bous and Gobero. Skeletons have been uncovered at both places.

  Between 4000 and 2800 BC the Sahara slowly dried out, and settlement shifted south and east. Farmers planted millet and sorghum. Iron and copper items appear at sites including Azawagh, Takedda, Marendet and the Termit Massif.

  Rock art from this long era survives in the Aïr Mountains, the Termit Massif, the Djado Plateau and Iferouane, among other places. It spans the years from 10,000 BC to 100 AD. The images range from the animals of the landscape to spear-carrying figures nicknamed Libyan warriors. Later, the Bura culture, from about 200 to 1300 AD, took its name from the Bura archaeological site. A burial there held iron and ceramic statuettes.

  Megalithic monuments in the Saharan region of Niger may date to as early as 4700 BCE. Archaeologists suggest they could have been forerunners of the mastabas and pyramids of ancient Egypt.

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• 3. Caravans and Empires

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  By at least the 5th century BC, Tuareg groups from the north were leading camel caravans through the land that is now Niger. This trans-Saharan trade came with waves of migration to the south and a mixing of sub-Saharan and North African peoples. The Muslim conquest of the Maghreb in the 7th century, the result of three Arab invasions, pushed more people southward. It also helped carry Islam into the region.

  Around 1230, Sundiata Keita founded the Mali Empire, a Mandinka state whose rise is told in the Epic of Sundiata. Mali broke away from the Sosso Empire, beat the Sosso at the Battle of Kirina in 1235, and defeated Ghana in 1240. Under Mansa Musa, who ruled from 1312 to 1337, it reached its greatest extent. Parts of today's Tillabéri Region came under Malian rule.

  Mansa Musa was a Muslim who made the hajj in 1324-25 and encouraged his subjects to follow Islam. Most ordinary citizens, however, seem to have kept their traditional animist beliefs, either instead of the new faith or alongside it. In the 15th century the empire began to decline. Fights over royal succession, weak kings, the shift of European trade routes to the coast and rebellions by the Mossi, Wolof, Tuareg and Songhai all played a part.

  The Songhai gave their name to their own empire, which centred on the bend of the Niger River. They began settling there between the 7th and 9th centuries, and by the 11th century Gao was the capital. Mali conquered Songhai in 1325, and Songhai regained its independence in 1375. Under Sonni Ali, who ruled from 1464 to 1492, it turned expansionist. Under Askia Mohammad I, from 1493 to 1528, it peaked. Most of what is now western Niger fell under its rule, including Agadez, conquered in 1496.

  Songhai could not withstand repeated attacks from the Saadi dynasty of Morocco. The Saadi defeated it decisively at the Battle of Tondibi in 1591, and the empire split into smaller kingdoms.

  Agadez was the seat of the Sultanate of Aïr, founded around 1449 by Sultan Ilisawan. It began as a trading post inhabited by a mixture of Hausa and Tuareg, and it grew into a strategic point on the trans-Saharan routes. After Songhai collapsed, the sultanate seems to have declined amid internal wars and clan conflicts. By the time Europeans began exploring the region in the 19th century, most of Agadez lay in ruins, and the French took it over.

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• 4. Lake Chad and Hausaland

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  Far to the east, around Lake Chad, the Zaghawa founded the Kanem-Bornu Empire around the 8th century. Its first base was Njimi, north-east of the lake. The Sayfawa dynasty began around 1075 under Mai Hummay. The empire reached its greatest extent in the 1200s, partly through the efforts of Mai Dunama Dibbalemi, who ruled from 1210 to 1259. Most of eastern and south-eastern Niger, including Bilma and Kaouar, was under Kanem's control. Arab traders had introduced Islam in the 11th century, and it won more converts over time.

  In the 14th century, attacks by the Bulala people forced Kanem to shift west of Lake Chad. There it became known as Bornu, ruled from Ngazargamu on what is now the Niger-Nigeria border. Mai Idris Alooma, who ruled around 1575 to 1610, brought prosperity and reconquered most of Kanem's traditional lands. That success explains the double name. By the 17th century Bornu was in decline, shrinking back to its Lake Chad heartland.

  Between the Niger River and Lake Chad lay Hausaland, home to the Hausa kingdoms. The Hausa emerged as a distinct people sometime between the 900s and 1400s. They adopted Islam gradually from the 14th century, sometimes alongside other religions. Some groups, such as the Azna, resisted Islam altogether, and the area around Dogondoutchi remains an animist stronghold. The kingdoms formed loose federations rather than a single state. Their kings were elected by the notables of the country and could be removed by them.

  The Bayajidda legend says seven states were founded by the sons of Bawo, the only son of Queen Daurama and Bayajidda, a man from Baghdad. These were Daura, Kano, Rano, Zaria, Gobir, Katsina and Biram. The legend adds seven more sons by a concubine, who founded the Banza Bakwai, meaning the illegitimate seven. They were Zamfara, Kebbi, Nupe, Gwari, Yauri, Ilorin and Kwararafa. One smaller state, Konni, centred on Birni-N'Konni, fit neither group.

  From the 1200s to the 1500s, the Fulani, a pastoral people found across the Sahel, migrated into Hausaland. In 1804 the Fulani scholar Usman Dan Fodio, who came from Gobir, declared a jihad. Some Fulani disliked the blended form of Islam practised there, and many resented corruption among the Hausa elite. He conquered most of Hausaland, though not Bornu, and proclaimed the Sokoto Caliphate in 1809.

  Some Hausa states survived by fleeing south. The Katsina, for example, moved to Maradi. Katsina and Gobir kept their independence, and newer states such as the Sultanate of Tessaoua appeared. Weakened by invasions from the Chad-based warlord Rabih az-Zubayr, the caliphate fell to the British in 1903.

  Other powers rose alongside these. Around 1730 to 1740, Kanuri settlers led by Mallam Yunus left Kanem and founded the Sultanate of Damagaram, centred on Zinder. In the 19th century Sultan Tanimoune Dan Souleymane declared it independent of Borno and began a phase of expansion. It resisted the Sokoto Caliphate. The Zarma founded the Dosso Kingdom in 1750 and resisted the rule of Hausa and Sokoto states. Damagaram fell to the French in 1899.

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• 5. The French Arrive

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  Mungo Park crossed the region in 1805-1806, and Heinrich Barth followed between 1850 and 1855 with James Richardson and Adolf Overweg. Gustav Nachtigal and Parfait-Louis Monteil came later. European powers with coastal colonies were turning their eyes to the interior. The Berlin conference of 1885 outlined how the powers would divide Africa into spheres of influence. France gained control of the upper valley of the Niger River, roughly today's Mali and Niger.

  In 1897 the French officer Marius Gabriel Cazemajou was sent to Niger. He reached the Sultanate of Damagaram in 1898 and stayed in Zinder at the court of Sultan Amadou Kouran Daga. The sultan feared that Cazemajou would ally with Rabih az-Zubayr, and the officer was killed.

  In 1899-1900, France coordinated three expeditions to link its African possessions. These were the Gentil Mission from French Congo, the Foureau-Lamy Mission from Algeria and the Voulet-Chanoine Mission from Timbuktu. They met at Kousséri, in the far north of Cameroon, and defeated Rabih az-Zubayr's forces at the Battle of Kousséri.

  The Voulet-Chanoine Mission became notorious for pillaging, looting, raping and killing civilians across southern Niger. On the 8th of May 1899, Captain Voulet and his men answered the resistance of Queen Sarraounia by murdering all the inhabitants of Birni-N'Konni. It is regarded as one of the worst massacres in French colonial history.

  The brutality caused a scandal, and Paris was forced to intervene. Lieutenant-Colonel Jean-François Klobb caught up with the mission near Tessaoua to relieve its leaders of command, and he was killed. A mutiny followed in which Voulet and Chanoine died. Lieutenants Paul Joalland and Octave Meynier then took over.

  The Military Territory of Niger was created in December 1904, with its capital at Niamey. The capital moved to Zinder in 1912 and returned to Niamey in 1922, when Niger became a full colony within French West Africa. The border with Britain's colony of Nigeria was finalised in 1910. In 1931 the Tibesti Mountains were transferred to Chad, and by the 1930s the borders had reached their later positions.

  France generally ruled indirectly, letting existing native structures continue if they accepted French supremacy. The Zarma of the Dosso Kingdom proved willing allies and became one of the more educated and westernised groups in Niger. Resistance was met with force. The blind cleric Alfa Saibou led the Kobkitanda rebellion in Dosso Region in 1905-1906. Oumarou Karma led the Karma revolt in the Niger valley from December 1905 to March 1906. Both were suppressed.

  The Tuareg of the north were harder to subdue, and France could not occupy Agadez until 1906. The Kaocen revolt of 1916-1917, led by Ag Mohammed Wau Teguidda Kaocen with backing from the Senussi in Fezzan, was violently suppressed. Kaocen fled to Fezzan, where he was later killed. The French set up a puppet sultan. Famines struck in 1913-1920 and 1931, and the colony stayed something of a backwater, though groundnut cultivation was introduced.

  During the Second World War, Charles de Gaulle issued the Brazzaville Declaration, announcing a less centralised French Union to replace the colonial empire. From 1946 to 1958 it gave colonial inhabitants a limited form of French citizenship. In that period the former teacher Hamani Diori formed the Nigerien Progressive Party, and Djibo Bakary led the left-wing Mouvement Socialiste Africain-Sawaba. On the 18th of December 1958, an autonomous Republic of Niger was created under Diori. A year later, the Sawaba movement was banned for being excessively anti-French.

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• 6. Single Party and Soldiers

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  Niger left the French Community on the 11th of July 1960 and gained full independence at midnight on the 3rd of August 1960. Hamani Diori became its first president. For his first 14 years, Niger was a single-party civilian state.

  The 1960s brought an expansion of the school system and limited industrialisation. Diori allowed French-led uranium mining at Arlit and supported France in the Algerian War. He survived a planned coup in 1963 and an assassination attempt in 1965. Most of this activity was masterminded by Djibo Bakary's Sawaba group, which launched an abortive rebellion in 1964. In the 1970s, economic difficulties, droughts and accusations of corruption and mismanaged food supplies ended the regime in a coup.

  Colonel Seyni Kountché masterminded the coup with a military group called the Conseil Militaire Supreme, and he ruled until his death in 1987. His first act was to tackle the food crisis. Political prisoners were freed, but freedoms generally deteriorated. Coups were attempted in 1975-1976 and 1984, and all were thwarted.

  Kountché wanted a development society funded mostly by the uranium mines in Agadez Region. The state created parastatal companies and built roads, schools and health centres. He punished corruption in government agencies without hesitation. The boom ended when uranium prices collapsed, and austerity and privatisation measures led by the IMF provoked opposition. In 1985 a Tuareg revolt in Tchintabaraden was suppressed. Kountché died in November 1987 from a brain tumour.

  Colonel Ali Saibou, his chief of staff, succeeded him. Saibou curtailed the secret police and media censorship and steered political reform under a single party. A new constitution was adopted by referendum in 1989, and he won the presidential election on the 10th of December 1989.

  On the 9th of February 1990, a violently repressed student march in Niamey left three students dead. Pressure for reform grew at home and abroad, and the regime gave way by the end of the year. Meanwhile armed Tuaregs attacked the town of Tchintabaraden, which some see as the start of the first Tuareg Rebellion. The military crackdown killed people, with estimates ranging from 70 to as many as 1,000.

  The National Sovereign Conference ran from the 29th of July to the 3rd of November 1991, presided over by Professor André Salifou. It gathered all elements of society and brought multi-party democracy. A referendum adopted a new constitution on the 26th of December 1992, and Mahamane Ousmane became the first president of the Third Republic on the 27th of March 1993. His presidency saw four government changes and an economic slump. Toubou dissatisfied with neglect of their region launched a rebellion in the east. In April 1995 the government signed a peace deal with a Tuareg rebel group.

  Political paralysis brought the military back. On the 27th of January 1996, Colonel Ibrahim Baré Maïnassara led a coup against President Ousmane. He won the presidential election on the 8th of July 1996, though many viewed the vote as irregular because the electoral commission was replaced during the campaign. After fraudulent local elections in 1999, the opposition stopped cooperating. Maïnassara was assassinated at Niamey Airport on the 9th of April 1999, in unknown circumstances. Major Daouda Malam Wanké took over and oversaw a new constitution, adopted on the 9th of August 1999. Observers found the elections that followed in October and November generally free and fair, and Wanké withdrew from government.

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• 7. Tazartche to Tchiani

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  Tandja Mamadou was sworn in on the 22nd of December 1999 as the first president of the Fifth Republic. He revived reforms that coups had halted and helped peacefully resolve a decades-long boundary dispute with Benin. In 2004 he was re-elected, becoming the first president to win consecutive elections without being deposed by a coup. By 2007 his relationship with his prime minister had deteriorated, and the Assembly voted him out in favour of Seyni Oumarou.

  Then Tandja tried to extend his stay in office. Supporters rallied behind the Tazartche movement, a Hausa word meaning overstay. Opponents, mostly opposition militants and civil society activists, were called anti-Tazartche. In 2009 he held a referendum that the Constitutional Court had ruled unconstitutional. When the court declared the new constitution illegal, he dissolved it and assumed emergency powers. The official results gave the referendum 92.5 percent of the vote on a 68 percent turnout, but the opposition boycotted it.

  In February 2010, a military junta led by Salou Djibo seized power in response. It drafted a constitution, approved by referendum on the 31st of October 2010, and held elections in 2011. Mahamadou Issoufou won and was re-elected in 2016. His years were marked by threats from the fallout of the Libyan Civil War and the Northern Mali conflict. Insurgents linked to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State operated in the west, and Boko Haram's insurgency spilled into the south-east. French and American forces helped Niger counter these threats.

  On the 10th of December 2019, fighters of the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara attacked a military post at Inates and killed over seventy soldiers. It was the deadliest single incident the Nigerien military has ever experienced. On the 9th of January 2020 a similar group assaulted the base at Chinagodrar and killed at least 89 soldiers. In 2021 the group began killing civilians en masse. On the 21st of March 2021, it attacked villages around Tillia and killed 141 people.

  Issoufou announced he would step down, and Nigeriens voted on the 27th of December 2020. Mohamed Bazoum came closest to a majority with 39.33 percent. In the run-off on the 20th of February 2021, he took 55.75 percent against 44.25 percent for the former president Mahamane Ousmane. Two days before his swearing-in, soldiers attempted a coup in Niamey, and gunfire was heard at the presidential palace. The Presidential Guard foiled it, and Bazoum was sworn in on the 2nd of April 2021.

  Late on the 26th of July 2023, the military overthrew him. On the 28th of July, General Abdourahamane Tchiani was proclaimed de facto head of state, and Ali Lamine Zeine became prime minister. ECOWAS threatened military intervention unless Bazoum was reinstated by the 6th of August. The deadline passed without intervention, but sanctions cut Nigerian energy exports that had supplied 70 to 90 percent of Niger's power.

  In November 2023 the juntas of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger formed the Alliance of Sahel States. Some ECOWAS sanctions were dropped on the 24th of February 2024, and Nigeria agreed to resume electricity exports. The junta had asked Russia's Wagner Group for help, though no Wagner mercenaries were known to have arrived. In October it expelled French troops. It also expelled the UN resident coordinator Louise Aubin, and in December it suspended cooperation with the Francophonie.

  The United States officially designated the takeover a coup, suspending most military cooperation and hundreds of millions of dollars of aid programmes. On the 16th of March 2024, the junta broke off its military agreement with the United States. Niamey had hosted a US drone base since 2013. In April 2024, Russian military trainers and equipment began to arrive, and the Americans agreed to withdraw their troops. That year Niger also left ECOWAS and joined the Confederation of Sahel States with Burkina Faso and Mali.

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• 8. Land, Water and People

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  Niger covers about 1.27 million square kilometres, making it the largest landlocked country in West Africa. Only Chad is a larger landlocked nation in Africa. It is less than twice the size of France and the world's 21st-largest country. Seven countries border it, and the longest frontier, 1,497 kilometres, runs along Nigeria to the south. The highest point is Mont Idoukal-n-Taghès in the Aïr Mountains, at 2,022 metres. The lowest is the Niger River, at 200 metres.

  The capital, Niamey, sits in the southwest corner of the country on the Niger River. People live mostly in clusters in the south and west. The population has grown from 3.4 million in 1960 to a rate of 3.3 percent a year, at 7.1 children per mother. Nearly half of Nigeriens are under 15.

  In the north, the Aïr and Ténéré National Nature Reserve protects addax antelopes, scimitar-horned oryx, gazelles and Barbary sheep. In the south, W National Park, on the border with Burkina Faso and Benin, shelters West African lions and one of the last populations of the Northwest African cheetah. Farther north lives the last relict population of the West African giraffe. Population pressure pushes destructive farming practices, and illegal hunting, bush fires and dams on the Niger River add to the strain. Since 1983, farmers have practised farmer-managed natural regeneration to raise food and timber production and resilience to climate extremes.

  The Hausa made up 55.4 percent of the population in 2001. Next came the Zarma and Songhay at 21 percent, the Tuareg at 9.3 percent, the Fula at 8.5 percent and the Kanuri Manga at 4.7 percent. Hausa replaced French as the official language in 2025, and ten indigenous languages hold national status. The 2012 census counted 99.3 percent of people as Muslim. Even so, the constitution guarantees a secular republic, and alcohol such as the locally produced Bière Niger is sold openly in most of the country.

  The Guérewol festival takes place at Abalak in Tahoua Region or at In'Gall in Agadez Region. Young Wodaabe men in elaborate ornamentation and face paint line up to dance and sing, competing for the attention of marriageable young women. National Geographic has featured it. At In'Gall, the three-day Cure Salée festival marks the end of the rainy season. Tuareg camel riders parade, followed by camel and horse races, songs, dances and storytelling.

  Daily life can be harsh. In Téra, a city of 30,000 people, only 40 percent have access to a working public water system. Niger's water authority opened ten boreholes and built a treatment plant in 2018, but the supply ran out about a year later and the plant closed. The European Investment Bank is now studying whether to repair a water tank or to treat and transport water from the Niger River, over 100 kilometres away. In the 2024 Global Hunger Index, Niger ranked 121st of 127 countries, with a score of 34.1. In 2025, the World Health Organization reported that Niger had become the first African country to eradicate onchocerciasis.

  Uranium remains central to the economy. In 2021, Niger was the main supplier of uranium to the European Union. In June 2025, the military leaders were reported to be planning to take control of Somaïr, a uranium company mostly owned by France. They accused it of irresponsible acts.

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