Niger

Niger is named for the river that crosses only its south-western corner, and most of the country is Sahara. The rocky massifs of the Aïr fill the north, and east of them the dunes of the Ténéré roll away; a lone acacia there guided caravans until a lorry knocked it down in 1973. Fossil beds at Gadoufaoua have given up dinosaurs and a giant crocodile. Only the southern Sahel gets enough rain for millet, and West Africa’s last wild giraffes browse near Kouré.

Life-size giraffes carved on a rock at Dabous, in the Aïr, date from a time when the Sahara was green. Agadez grew rich on the caravan trade, and its great mosque carries a tapering mud-brick minaret first raised in the sixteenth century; camels carried salt from the Bilma oasis to the Hausa cities. French columns conquered the region around 1900 and faced a Tuareg rising led by Kaocen in 1916–17. Niger gained independence in August 1960 under Hamani Diori.

Hausa farmers, Zarma and Songhai along the river, and Tuareg and Fulani herders share an overwhelmingly Muslim country. When the rains end, herders drive their animals to the salty pastures around In-Gall for the Cure Salée, where Wodaabe men dance the Gerewol and women judge their beauty. Tuareg smiths of Agadez make the silver cross that bears the town’s name. The purple Galmi onion sells across West Africa, and uranium has been mined around Arlit since the 1970s.