Category Archives: Niger

Niger’s president blames explosive birth rate on ‘a misreading of Islam’

Posted on by

Mahamadou Issoufou calls for ‘responsible parenthood’ as he warns population boom will undermine climate adaptation

A misreading of Islam led to Niger’s explosive birth rate, hampering the country’s fight to adapt to the climate crisis and preserve its shrinking resources, the country’s president has said.

This nexus of issues is likely to have an increasingly direct impact on European politics, said Mahamadou Issoufou, who warned warned that migration may exceed the levels it reached during the second world war.

Continue reading...

Joseph Wilson obituary

Posted on by

Diplomat who disputed the US intelligence used to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003

Joseph Wilson, who has died aged 69 of organ failure, was the American diplomat whose first-hand questioning of the rationale behind the 2003 invasion of Iraq earned him the enmity of the George W Bush administration, and saw his wife Valerie Plame’s identity as a CIA operative exposed publicly in retaliation.

In 2002, with the administration building its case for war with Iraq, the CIA sent Wilson, usually known as “Joe”, to investigate whether the Iraqis had sought to buy yellowcake uranium ore, which might be enriched for use in nuclear weapons, from Niger.

Continue reading...

Violence forces 1.9 million children out of classes in west and central Africa

Posted on by

Unicef report points to three-fold increase in number of schools closed in the region in two years due to intensifying conflict

More than 1.9 million children are forced out of school across west and central Africa due to rising violence and insecurity, putting them at higher risk of recruitment by armed groups, the UN’s children agency has warned.

In an urgent report published on Friday, Unicef revealed that more than 9,000 schools have been shut down as of June this year in eight countries; Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, Niger and Nigeria.

Continue reading...

‘We are modern slaves’: Mdou Moctar, the Hendrix of the Sahara

Posted on by

His first guitar was made from wood and bicycle parts and his first songs were shared via Bluetooth in the desert. But the Niger musician has become international – and is taking aim at France

How do you even dream of making music when your family and religious leaders disapprove, when you live at the edge of the Sahara desert, and you cannot afford an instrument?

It helps that the Tuareg musician Mdou Moctar, from Niger, is not easily discouraged. Unable to acquire a guitar, he made one out of a piece of wood with brake wires from an old bicycle for strings, and taught himself to play in secret. “I was from a religious family and music was not welcome, but I would go and listen to local musicians and dream of being like them,” the 32-year-old singer-songwriter says over the phone while on tour in the US.

Continue reading...

Child marriage in Niger is a cultural issue, not an Islamic one

Posted on by

A visit to the world’s fifth poorest country has shown me that battling early and forced marriage begins with communities

Islam, for me, is a way of life and the core of my world. As a Muslim woman I have always been encouraged to be who I want to be.

I get frustrated when people say: “Why do you wear a hijab? Isn’t that a sign of women’s oppression?” I choose to wear a hijab; I choose to be an educated and liberated woman and I choose to follow Islam.

Continue reading...

APNewsBreak: US soldier ambushed in Niger wasn’t captured

Posted on by
Dispelling a swirl of rumors about how Sgt. La David T. Johnson, 25, of Miami Gardens, Florida, died, the report has determined that he was killed by enemy rifle and machine gun fire as he fled the attack by an offshoot of the Islamic State group about 120 miles north of Niamey, the capital of the African country.