Niger the beginning of the 20th century. What is now Niger was created from four distinct cultural areas in the pre-colonial era: the Zarma 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 been part of the Kanem-Bornu Empire; and the Tuareg nomads of the Aïr Mountains and Saharan desert in the vast north. Each of these communities,
Far North Region, Cameroon the Mandara Mountains. The Mayo Kébi, Mayo Louti, and their tributaries form part of the Niger River basin. The Louti rises in the Mandaras, passing and swelling the Kébi in the North Province. The Kébi rises south of Yagoua and flows into western Chad. The province's other rivers are part of the Chad Basin. The El Beid River flows northwest from the Kalamalou National Park and forms the northernmost stretch of the border between Cameroon and Nigeria. The Mayo Tsanaga rises south and west of the El Béïd's source and moves eastward at the north of the Diamaré Depression. The