Several people have asked me to describe life in Niger so I thought I’d write a short blog post about my experiences here to offer some limited insights. Keep in mind that I’ve been here all of six weeks and am by no means an expert on the place. Most of my time has been spent in the capital, Niamey, but I have ventured out into the countryside a few times and have interacted with locals at work, visiting our projects, at the gym (naturally), at the community pool, and out on the town. People like my friend Sylvan, who spent two years in eastern Niger in the Peace Corps, would have a much more nuanced and well-rounded perspective than I about rural life here, but I’ll offer what I observations and comparisons I can and leave it to the experts to fill in the rest.
Niger, at least according to the UNDP’s Human Development Index (HDI), is in fact the world’s least developed country. The HDI is a composite index of three distinct but interrelated measures of development: per capita income, education, and life expectancy. It’s intended to provide a broader perspective on the development standing of a country than GDP or GDP per capita can offer. Of the 188 countries that are measured by the UNDP, you guessed it, Niger brings up the rear in 188th.
Why does it come in dead last, you might ask? To look around the capital, Niamey, you’d think that it was an obviously poor country but that there is some basic level of infrastructure. Niamey, itself a city of one million people (out of a total population of 17 million in Niger) is the chaotic, dusty, and underdeveloped hub of national activity. But to be honest, it doesn’t feel like a city of one million people. It feels like an oversized, relatively sleepy district capital. For most travelers, I dare say it would be the sparsest and poorest capital they had ever visited,[1] with the majority of its roads unpaved, electricity intermittent, and a mixture of cars, motos, donkeys, and cattle clogging the cracked roads. In all but the most central parts of the city, it feels somewhat sparsely populated. Still, you can find your creature comforts here as an expat (French boulangeries and patisseries, Italian restaurants, Western-style grocery stores), and, in what was a massive surprise to me given the HDI ranking, you can actually drink the water that comes out of the tap. A massive plus for public sanitation and hygiene in general.
The main driver behind the dismal HDI ranking is clearly the rural areas. Most people in the country are either farmers or cattle herders.[2] And from what I have been told by the staff here at Catholic Relief Services (CRS), where I have been working as a consultant, most of these farmers still employ fairly rudimentary methods of production, using hand-held tools to plant and harvest their crops. Tractors are a rarity, though I did spot a solitary tractor on a visit to the nearby district of Ouallam.
Adding to Niger’s troubles is the fact that it suffers from the negative externalities (to use an economic term) of having bad neighbors. Boko Haram roams the southeastern border between Niger and Nigeria and has attacked the border town of Diffa, resulting in numerous deaths and displacement of the location population. Mali, on Niger’s western border, has had its own civil war in recent years, and persistent attacks continue throughout the country but especially in the region of Gao which abuts Niger. Considering that two of its other neighbors are Libya and Chad, it’s not surprising that development in Niger has suffered as a result of restricted trade and the overflow of regional instabilities.
Climate change in particular has been rough on the local people, dependent as they are on agriculture and therefore the scant rain that comes to the southern Sahel. The reason that I’m here is that CRS is leading a DFID[3]-funded climate change resiliency program. The program team is engaging in a bunch of cool projects including climate-smart agriculture (using innovative, low-tech moisture capture techniques along with the promotion of enhanced, drought- and pest-resistant seeds), natural resource management, disaster risk reduction (early warning systems for natural disasters), governance initiatives (better representation and land titling), and gender empowerment (more women in local government). If you’re curious about some of the specifics, you can read the blog post I wrote for the project’s website here. There’s no denying that it’s an ambitious endeavor, and there’s a lot to recommend it. But from the looks of the countryside that you can see in these photos, there’s a lot left to be done.
What Niger lacks in development, however, it makes up for in charm. On the whole, I have found the people in Niger to be infallibly polite and friendly. Smiling faces have met me at almost every turn. Granted, when you’re a white dude ambling around non-touristy sub-Saharan Africa, there’s always a bit of natural curiosity, most of it benign and amicable, but the Nigeriens seem to be a cut above. I’d feel confident nominating them for an award in the category of world’s friendliest people along with Filipinos and Peruvians. At the gym, people are always smiling at me, spotting for me, asking me where I’m from and what I’m doing here. At the Olympic pool, where I go every Sunday to swim laps, I’ve been approached for coaching tips, workout regimens, and other such advice. I’ve played in a local volleyball game every Friday night that one of my CRS colleagues has taken me to, and the guys couldn’t be friendlier. When I was a consultant in the Central African Republic (CAR) and even in Cameroon, most of my colleagues were always pleasant but many were also a bit skeptical of me. Was I there to do their jobs? Replace them? Or tell them what to do? There have seemingly been no such concerns here nor any hesitation to collaborate.
I’ve also had the opportunity to see some of the most beautiful desert landscapes I’ve ever seen while taking part in the weekly hashes (group runs) outside of Niamey. While these aren’t you’re typical beer-swilling hashes with which some of you may be familiar,[4] they did offer fantastic trails and no shortage of stunning scenery, as you can see in these pictures.
It’s been a much more enjoyable time here in Niger, both professionally and personally, that I might have imagined. It’s a far cry from the tension that I experience in CAR, though that country was in the middle of a civil war and mass displacement when I was there two years ago, to be fair. And it’s quainter and friendly than Cameroon, which itself has its perks (a lovely coastline for one, which landlocked Niger is sadly lacking). I’m not supposing that any of you will go on a destination vacation in Niger anytime soon (it wasn’t close to making the Top 10 vacation get-away destinations, after all), but it’s not such a bad place to hang your hat for a couple weeks or months. And it brings me one—albeit somewhat random—country closer in the quest for 100.
So in the event that you’re feeling particularly adventurous and think that all the world’s great places are overrun with tourists, you could do a lot worse than Niger for an off-the-beaten path trek through the Sahel or sub-Saharan Africa.
[1] But yours truly knows better having spent quality time in Bangui, CAR
[2] http://www.afdb.org/en/countries/west-africa/niger/niger-economic-outlook/
[3] DFID is the British equivalent of the US Agency for International Development (or USAID).
[4] I did try to start a tradition of bringing and drinking beer afterward but it didn’t really catch on.
Too Many Thoughts, So Little Time 
Great blog, Bill. Felt like I was there with you trying to keep up with your workout.
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