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The Niger Portal


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Niger (/ˈnər/ or /nˈʒɛər/; French pronunciation: ​[niʒɛʁ]), officially named the Republic of Niger, is a landlocked country in Western Africa, named after the Niger River. It borders Nigeria and Benin to the south, Burkina Faso and Mali to the west, Algeria and Libya to the north and Chad to the east. Niger covers a land area of almost 1,270,000 km², over 80 percent of which is covered by the Sahara desert. The country's population of just above 15,000,000 is mostly clustered in the far south and west of the nation. The capital city is Niamey.

Niger is a developing country. Much of the non-desert portions of the country are threatened by periodic drought and desertification. The economy is concentrated around subsistence and some export agriculture clustered in the more fertile south, and the export of raw materials—especially uranium ore. Niger remains handicapped by its landlocked position, poor education, infrastructure, health care, deserts, poverty and environmental degradation.


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1997 270A-24 Niger River.jpg

The Niger River (/ˈnər/ NYE-jər) is the principal river of western Africa, extending about 4,180 km (2,600 mi). Its drainage basin is 2,117,700 km2 (817,600 sq mi) in area. Its source is in the Guinea Highlands in southeastern Guinea. It runs in a crescent through Mali, Niger, on the border with Benin and then through Nigeria, discharging through a massive delta, known as the Niger Delta of the Oil Rivers, into the Gulf of Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean. The Niger is the third-longest river in Africa, exceeded only by the Nile and the Congo River (also known as the Zaïre River). Its main tributary is the Benue River.

Different African languages have a variety of names for the river. The Niger is still called Jeliba or Joliba "great river" in Manding, Isa Ber "big river" in Songhay, and Oya, a Yoruba River Niger goddess. A good possibility for a source of "Niger" remains the Tuareg phrase gher n gheren "river of rivers", shortened to ngher, a local name used along the middle reaches of the river around Timbuktu. As Tuareg is a Berber language which traveled from the Mediterranean basin with the Tuareg in the 10th century, it provides a linguistic link between the two regions.

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1997 275-15 young Wodaabe women.jpg
Credit: Dan Lundberg

Young Wodaabe women in Niger.

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Tandja in Nigeria June 2007.jpg


President Tandja is of mixed Fula and Kanuri ancestry. He was the first President of Niger to not be ethnically Hausa or Djerma. Following a constitutional crisis in 2009, which was caused by Tandja's efforts to remain in office beyond the originally scheduled end of his term, he was ousted by the military in a coup d'etat in February 2010.

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