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Niger Profile
The land now known as Niger can be traced back to 135 million years BCE following the discovery in 1999 of a dinosaur named Jobaria Tiguidensis, a 20-ton Sauropod. Just five thousand years ago the land was fertile grassland but today, following millennia of desertification, 80% of the landlocked country is covered by the Sahara with that desert increasing in size every year.
The area had a long experience of European exploration with it becoming occupied by France in 1890 and later turning into a French colony in 1922. Modern day Niger, with its population of 26.21 million (2022) shares borders with Nigeria and Benin to its south, Burkina Faso and Mali to its west, Algeria and Libya to its north and Chad to its east.
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This is widely credited to a low 13% immunization rate for children between 12-23 months. Just under half the population being aged 0-14 years old and life expectancy is around 61.58 years (2021). Those who survive are at risk of sexual exploitation and human trafficking for enforced begging, enforced working in in gold mines, domestic servitude and also for working in agriculture and stone quarries. To add to all of these problems are the famines that regularly sweep across West Africa placing literally millions of already malnourished children at risk of starving to death following years of drought across the region.
