Culture of Niger Culture of Niger The culture of Niger is marked by variation, evidence of the cultural crossroads which French colonialism formed into a unified state from the beginning of the 20th century. What is now Niger was created from four distinct cultural areas in the pre-colonial era: the Djerma dominated Niger River valley in the southwest; the northern periphery of Hausaland, made mostly of those states which had resisted the Sokoto Caliphate, and ranged along the long southern border with Nigeria; the Lake Chad basin and Kaouar in the far east, populated by Kanuri farmers and Toubou pastoralists who had once
Colony of Niger Tibesti Cercle ceded to Chad Colony in French Equatorial Africa, and in 1932, the colony of French Upper Volta was divided amongst its neighbors, with the Cercles of Dori and Fada N'gourma ceded to Niger Colony. Niger Colony officials, unlike neighboring Chad, remained loyal to the French Vichy government after 1940, and thus closed its southern border (to Nigeria) and eastern border until 1944. On 31 December 1946 the Military Territories of N'Guigmi and Agadez were ceded to Niger Colony, leaving only Bilma Cercle as the last military-run section of modern Niger. This area in the far north east only