Niger
Capital: Niamey · West Africa
Saharan-Sahelian crossroads of Tuareg confederations, Hausa city-states, Songhai-Zarma riverlands and the Wodaabe's famous Gerewol festival.
Ethnic communities
- HausaCity-state traditions (Zinder/Damagaram); trade and craft guilds
- Zarma-SonghaiNiger River farmers, heirs of Songhai
- TuaregAïr and Azawagh confederations; cross-of-Agadez silverwork
- Wodaabe (Fulbe)Nomads famed for the Gerewol male beauty ritual
More communities of Niger
- Zarma · Niamey-region farmers of Songhai speech
- Songhai · River-bend heirs of Gao's empire
- Tuareg (Kel Aïr, Kel Gres) · Aïr confederations of the azalai salt runs
- Wodaabe Fulbe · Gerewol festival nomads of the Azawagh
- Settled Fulbe · Agro-pastoral communities across the south
- Kanuri (Beri Beri) · Bornu's western heirs around Zinder
- Toubou (Teda & Daza) · Kawar and Ténéré desert masters
- Diffa Arabs · Mahamid camel herders of the far east
- Gourmantché · Southwestern farmers over the Burkina line
- Buduma (Yedina) · Lake Chad islanders of papyrus boats
- Manga Kanuri · Eastern sands' millet and natron folk
- Kurtey & Wogo · River-island rice growers of Songhai speech
- Dendi · Southern river traders toward Benin
- Azna (Arna) · Hausa-speaking keepers of pre-Islamic bori shrines
Languages
Major languages: Hausa, Zarma-Songhai, Tamashek, Fulfulde, Kanuri, French
Language families: Afro-Asiatic (Chadic, Berber); Nilo-Saharan
Historical kingdoms & states
- • Songhai Empire
- • Sultanate of Aïr (Agadez)
- • Damagaram (Zinder)
- • Dosso kingdom
Heritage sites
- • Historic centre of Agadez
- • Aïr and Ténéré Reserves
Cultural highlights
National heroes of Niger
See all African heroesFigures widely honoured here, across politics, sport, the arts and public life.
- Sportb. 1994
Abdoulrazak Issoufou Alfaga
Taekwondo
Won Niger's second ever Olympic medal, silver in Rio in 2016, in the heavyweight division.
- Music & the artsb. 1980
Bombino
Tuareg desert rock
Guitarist who learned to play in exile during the Tuareg rebellions and has since taken Agadez desert rock to Grammy-nominated albums.
- Politics & liberation1922–1998
Djibo Bakary
Independence
Trade unionist who campaigned for a no vote in the 1958 referendum and for immediate Nigerien independence, and spent long years in exile for it.
Deep-dive community profiles
Amazigh (Berber)
The indigenous peoples of North Africa — 'Imazighen', the free people — whose Tifinagh script, mountain and desert civilizations, and millennia of continuous culture long predate the Arab arrival, stretching from the Canary Islands to the Siwa oasis.
Open deep profile →Awlad Suleiman
The Arab confederation of the Fezzan — camel nomads driven south from Sirte by the Ottomans in the 1840s, who established themselves around Lake Chad and in southern Libya, and whose cross-border networks have made them central to the smuggling economies and conflicts of the central Sahara.
Open deep profile →Buduma (Yedina)
Island people of Lake Chad, herders of the amphibious kuri cattle and builders of papyrus boats, whose lake shrank by nine-tenths within a generation and whose islands became the base of an insurgency.
Open deep profile →Dendi
The Songhay of the far south — descendants of the Songhay empire's survivors who withdrew downriver after Tondibi, and who became the Muslim merchants of northern Benin's Niger valley towns.
Open deep profile →Fulani (Fulbe)
The great pastoral nation of the Sahel — some 40 million people scattered from Senegal to Sudan, keepers of the pulaaku ethical code, founders of Islamic reform states, and among them the Wodaabe, whose Gerewol beauty festival is world-famous.
Open deep profile →Gourmantché
The people of the eastern savanna — farmers and hunters of a kingdom that survived alongside the Mossi for six centuries, whose diviners are consulted across the region, and whose country has become the epicentre of the Sahel's insurgency.
Open deep profile →Hausa
West Africa's greatest urban trading civilization — the walled city-states of Kano, Katsina and Zaria, a lingua franca spoken by over 80 million, centuries of Islamic scholarship, and the spectacular horsemanship of the Durbar.
Open deep profile →Kanembu
The founding people of the Kanem empire — Lake Chad farmers and herders whose eleventh-century state was the first in the region to adopt Islam, whose mai ruled for a thousand years, and whose descendants still farm the lake's retreating shore.
Open deep profile →Kanuri
The imperial people of the Lake Chad basin — heirs of Kanem-Bornu, a Muslim state that lasted a thousand years, whose sultans corresponded with Istanbul and whose scholars, saddled cavalry and desert trade routes linked the Sahara to the savanna.
Open deep profile →Shuwa Arabs (Baggara of the Chad basin)
Cattle Arabs of the Lake Chad basin whose ancestors crossed the Sahel from the Nile a thousand years ago, whose dialect is the westernmost Arabic in the world, and who make up a large part of Chad's population and its army.
Open deep profile →Songhai
Heirs of West Africa's largest empire — the Niger-bend civilization of Gao, Timbuktu and the askias, whose farmers, fishers and traders still line the great river from Mali through Niger.
Open deep profile →Tebu (Toubou)
The people of the Tibesti — mountain and desert nomads of the central Sahara, famous for enduring journeys on minimal food and water, holders of the volcanic massif where Chad, Libya and Niger meet, and central to the smuggling and conflict economies of the region.
Open deep profile →Tuareg (Kel Tamasheq)
The veiled lords of the central Sahara — matrilineal confederations who ran the desert's caravans for a millennium, write in ancient Tifinagh, and whose women own the tents, the poetry and the one-string imzad that carries the nomad soul.
Open deep profile →Wodaabe
The cattle nomads of the southern Sahara's edge — a Fulani group who kept the older pastoral life when others settled, and whose Guerewol festival has men in ochre and white paint dancing for hours to be judged on beauty by women.
Open deep profile →Zarma (Djerma)
The people of Niger's south-west — Songhay-speaking farmers of the river valley who resisted French conquest at Lougou under a woman ruler, whose holey possession cult sends the spirits of the bush into dancers' bodies, and who supply much of Niger's civil service.
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