Flooding in Niger. Photo: UNICEF.
By Pavan Kulkarni – Nov 11, 2024
Aboubakar Alassane of the West Africa Peoples Organization (WAPO) explains how Nigeriens are enduring the consequences of unprecedented floods that devastated their economy already crippled by sanctions.
In the aftermath of devastation left behind in the wake of unprecedented floods, Nigeriens are rebuilding their livelihoods and economy with the help of the several relief measures instituted by the government to drastically cut prices of essential commodities and services.
The Sahel-wide flooding between June and October has exacted a particularly high toll on the people of Niger, destroying crops, cattle, houses and infrastructure in one of the world’s poorest countries whose economy had already been strangled by the seven month-long sanctions.
By late September, at least 339 were killed, many more injured, and 1.1 million people displaced by the floods caused by unprecedented rain affecting almost 190,000 hectares of cultivated agricultural land in a country with one of the highest child malnutrition rates.
Maradi region, the agricultural hub of south-central Niger, was the worst affected, with “the equivalent of an entire month’s worth of rain falling in a day,” said Aboubakar Alassane, a member of the coordination council of West Africa Peoples Organization (WAPO).
Masses of livestock, which is also one of the most important sources of foreign exchange in Niger, were washed away in the Agadez region in the Sahara desert in central-north Niger, destroying the sole livelihood of nomadic communities.
The floods have further eroded the food supply that had already been dwindling, with agricultural land and pastures shrinking due to deficit rainfall over the five years before this deluge.
This climate catastrophe took place as Niger was already suffering under the harsh sanctions imposed by the regional bloc Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), egged on by France, following the ouster of the regime of Mohamed Bazoum, perceived domestically as a puppet of France.
Mass protests against the military deployment and economic domination of the country by its former colonizer culminated in a coup led by the head of his presidential guard, General Abdourahamane Tchiani, removing Bazoum on July 26, 2023. A military government called the National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland (CNSP) was formed.
Sanctions followed on July 30, without any notice period. State assets were frozen. A no-fly zone was imposed. The borders of this landlocked country were closed immediately. Even those trucks that had already cleared the paperwork were halted at the borders. Between July 30 and October 31 that year, 42,037 tons of various goods worth over 23 million US dollars were prevented from crossing into Niger.
Alassane recounted that immediately after the sanctions were imposed, the price of a 25 kg bag of rice nearly doubled from 12,000 to 21,000 CFA Franc, a colonial currency through which France continues to exert monetary control over its former colonies in West Africa.
A 75 kg bag of corn, “which had never exceeded 23,000 CFA, was selling at 40,000. Millet prices rose similarly, with niébé beans reaching 47,000 CFA, up from 20,000-25,000 before sanctions. Within a week, people were forced to line up in long queues before stores” to buy the limited supplies of food items that had to be rationed, he added.
The foreign market for onions, one of Niger’s main irrigated crops over 90% of which used to be exported, was cut-off. Hundreds of thousands of farmers were unable to sell their produce. Many more involved in its supply chain and export lost their livelihoods. The government is still struggling to resolve the disputes that arose between farmers, transporters and exporters due to the sudden inability to make payments.
Neighboring Nigeria, on which Niger depended for 70% of its electricity supply while its Uranium powered France’s nuclear plants, cut-off power in violation of the bilateral agreements. “Electricity was rationed to 4 hours per neighborhood in Niamey. Dosso and Tillaberi only had electricity for 6 to 8 hours, when the old thermal generators, purchased in the 1980s, did not break down,” he added. Students were not able to study after dark.
Desperation and misery increased amongst the poorest as a consequence of the economic devastation caused by the sanctions, ostensibly imposed to ‘restore democracy’.
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Sanctions have only served to consolidate popular support of the military government
Be it “Cuba, Russia, DPR Korea, Iraq, Iran, Venezuela, Libya, Mali, Burkina Faso and now Niger”, sanctions have always been imposed to make the people suffer “to turn them against their governments.” However, like in all these countries, it has “had the opposite effect,” maintains Alassane.
In the immediate aftermath of the coup removing Bazoum, Niger was divided between those who supported the coup and those who opposed it, he explained. It was amid this confrontation tearing Niger’s political fabric two ways, that the ECOWAS imposed sanctions and threatened war with the backing of France.
“We had never given anyone the mandate to kill us because a president was deposed by a coup,” Alassane protested. He described what followed as a “patriotic surge” that united the country behind the CNSP, which consolidated its popular support by ordering the French troops out of the country and demonstrating its commitment to implement the popular will.
France refused to withdraw its troops, provoking mass demonstrations outside its military base and embassy in Niamey. “The march amid the pouring rain on September 2, 2023 was an unprecedented display of popular strength in the history of Niger, Alassane said. “Some even say that the proclamation of the country’s independence did not draw as large a crowd proportionally to the population.”
Later that month, neighboring Mali and Burkina Faso vowed to defend Niger if attacked, having also suffered sanctions after similar popularly supported coups in recent years removed French-backed regimes and forced its troops out of the two countries. The trio came together to form the Alliance of Sahel States (AES).
ECOWAS, on the other hand, was a divided bloc, with its member states facing domestic opposition to the war from popular movements and opposition parties. France announced retreat in late-September and completed the withdrawal of its troops by the year-end.
In January 2024, the AES states announced their decision to withdraw from ECOWAS, threatening to halve its geographical expanse and disrupt the 15-member bloc’s trade and service flows worth almost USD 150 million annually. Amid this existential crisis looming over ECOWAS, its leaders met in late February and lifted the economic sanctions “on purely humanitarian grounds.”
However, “we still feel the effects,” Alassane said. With no confidence in the economy which suffered missed deadlines for payments due to a freeze on transactions due to sanctions, “businesses are closing one after another.”
“Spare parts for vehicles and other mechanical equipment are slow to arrive. We are forced to repair using second-hand parts, which are often defective. The automobile fleet, which is essential for a landlocked country, is shrinking more and more. Every day, we see people struggling with old broken vehicles.”
Niger relies on the port of Cotonou in Benin for most of its imports of machines, spare parts, equipment, and food essentials, while exporting cash crops, uranium and other minerals. Although the sanctions imposing border closure were lifted, Alassane said that the CNSP has been forced to keep the border closed from Niger’s side due to threats of terror attacks.
The official reasons stated by France for stationing its troops in its former colonies in this region was to fight these terror groups it had helped spawn across the Sahel with its participation in the war destroying Libya. During its nearly decade-long troop deployment, terror attacks only increased.
After being compelled to withdraw, France is accused of aiding these terror groups to destabilize these AES states. “France has set up new military bases on the Beninese side of the border to train terrorists to carry out attacks on Niger and Burkina Faso,” Alassane said, explaining Niger’s compulsion to close the Beninese border despite the consequent shortages.
Already reeling under the pressure of this economic crisis, the Nigerien people were additionally hit by the country-wide floods this monsoon. Although floods in this season are common in the region where even the deficit rains pour heavily in short bursts, the scale of devastation left in its wake this year is “unprecedented”.
Relief measures
The CNSP has taken several measures to provide relief, including “a 50% reduction in the cost of medical procedures, examinations, and other services in public hospitals and health centers,” Alassane said. To increase domestic food availability, the CNSP has banned exports of cereals and pulses outside the AES countries.
Despite being heavily reliant on imports for its own food needs, “more than 50% of the harvest were exported to Nigeria” over the last years because farmers could not find remunerative prices in the local market, he explained.
To mitigate this problem, the CNSP has launched a campaign to provide remuneration to the farmers by purchasing their produce above the market price, while making it available for the domestic consumers at a subsidized rate.
80% of the farming is done on high lands which escaped the devastating impact of the floods, Alassane added. In fact, the yield has been “excellent” due to above-average rain. The government is prioritizing securing this harvest. All these measures have “drastically” dropped the prices of cereals, he said. The price of a 75 kg sack of millet is now down by about 45% since July.
With the price of cement slashed by 50% through waiver on certain taxes on the commodity and exemption of its inputs from taxation, “new construction projects are visible in capital Niamey and other main cities”.
Despite all these travails the Nigeriens have endured in the crosshairs of climate catastrophe and sanctions, at no point did it undermine the popular support for the CNSP, Alassane insists. “As proof” he points out “each time the CNSP announces the holding of the National Consultative Council” under the pressure of the ECOWAS, France and its Western allies, it has been forced to backtrack due to popular opposition.
This council, he added. “is set up every time there is a coup d’état to declare” that the military is only ruling as a “transitional government” whose decisions will be reviewed by the Council until a new constitution is drafted and power is ceded to a civilian government after an election. Mali and Burkina Faso have constituted such councils.
However, Nigeriens do not want this council. Every time there has been a coup in the past, the Council has served as “a door for Western imperialism” to intervene, be it through NGOs or other blocs of civil society, to ensure that another French puppet takes power when the transitional period comes to close, Alassane explained.
Pavan Kulkarni
Journalist
