Niamey & the Southwest

The south-west lies on the Niger river, and its history is tied to the Songhai. The river country around Tillabéri and Ayorou was part of the Songhai Empire ruled from Gao, and after the Moroccan invasion of 1591 Songhai princes retreated down the river and founded small states in this area. Their descendants, and the closely related Zarma, remain the region's majority. The Zarma built a federation of chiefdoms whose leading ruler, the Djermakoy of Dosso, gained power in the 19th century by allying with outside forces against rivals, including, in the 1890s, the French.

Fula herders moved in over the centuries, and in the 19th century the town of Say, on the river south of Niamey, became an Islamic centre founded by the scholar Alfa Mahaman Diobo. The French arrived in the late 1890s and in 1926 moved the colony's capital from Zinder to Niamey, then a small cluster of villages chosen for its river site and its closeness to the rest of French West Africa.

Niamey grew into the capital of independent Niger in 1960 and is the setting of its politics, including the coups of 1974, 1996, 1999, 2010 and 2023. The Kennedy bridge of 1970 tied it to the right bank. Since the late 2010s the Tillabéri region has been drawn into the Sahel's war: a 2017 ambush at Tongo Tongo killed Nigerien and American soldiers, and later attacks on army posts at Inates and elsewhere killed dozens.

Zarma-Songhai is the language of the river and the capital's streets, though Hausa is widely spoken, and the region is also home to Fula herders, Tuareg and Hausa minorities in Tillabéri. Islam shapes daily life, but the Zarma and Songhai also keep an older tradition of spirit possession, the holey, in which dancers are taken over by spirits, and the village of Wanzerbé is famous for its sohanci, sorcerers who claim descent from the Songhai king Sonni Ali.

Griots recite genealogies and epics of the Songhai past at weddings, naming ceremonies and royal occasions, and the Djermakoy of Dosso keeps a ceremonial role. Traditional wrestling is followed passionately, and Niamey's arena hosts the national championship in some years.

Niamey is the centre of the country's culture: the ethnographic filmmaker Jean Rouch worked here, Oumarou Ganda and other Nigerien directors made the first films of the country's cinema, and the city's music scene mixes Zarma and Hausa song with Tuareg guitar and hip hop.

Niamey has grown from a few thousand people in the 1930s to well over a million today, spreading across the plateau from the river. Dosso, Tillabéri, Téra, Filingué, Gaya and Say are small towns; most people live in farming villages.

The economy is millet, sorghum, cowpeas and groundnuts on rain-fed fields, rice and market gardens along the river, fishing, and cattle herded between the river and the northern pastures. Gaya is a border market town for trade with Benin and Nigeria, and the capital lives on government, aid agencies, trade and a large informal sector of taxi drivers, tailors, mechanics and vendors.

Niamey days start early before the heat, pause in the hottest hours and pick up again after the afternoon prayer, with evening tea on mats outside compounds and crowds along the river. The war has pushed people into the capital from rural Tillabéri, closed schools and markets in the north-west, and emptied the tourism that once reached the W park, Kouré and Ayorou.

The south-west eats from the millet field and the river. The staple is a stiff millet porridge eaten with a sauce of baobab leaves, okra or groundnut, and rice with tomato sauce is the daily town meal. Fish from the Niger is grilled on riverside fires in Niamey or fried and sold at the roadside.

Moringa leaves are a favourite green, eaten in salads with groundnut paste and onion or cooked into sauces, and dambou is a steamed couscous of millet or rice mixed with moringa leaves. Fura, balls of millet mixed with sour milk, is sold everywhere in the heat.

Niamey's street food includes brochettes of mutton, kilishi dried meat and grilled guinea fowl, with fresh mangoes in season from the gardens near the river and Gaya. Drinks are sweet green tea in small glasses, bissap from hibiscus, ginger juice and, in the city, cold soft drinks. Alcohol is little seen outside a few Niamey bars.

Niamey and the Niger river are the region's centrepiece. The National Museum, a park-like compound of pavilions, holds dinosaur skeletons from the Sahara, traditional houses, crafts and a small zoo; the Grand Mosque, the Grand Marché and the Petit Marché, and the riverside at sunset with pirogues and gardens, fill out the city.

East of the capital, the Kouré giraffe zone shelters the last herd of West African giraffes, which roam among farms and villages on the plateau; numbers have grown from a few dozen in the 1990s to several hundred. Further east, Dosso has the palace of the Djermakoy and a market at the crossroads of the national road, with the fossil valleys of the Dallol Bosso and Dallol Maouri nearby.

South of Niamey, the W National Park takes its name from the double bend of the Niger along its edge and forms part of a cross-border UNESCO World Heritage Site with Benin and Burkina Faso; elephants, buffalo, antelope and hippos live in its savanna and gallery forest. North-west, Ayorou's riverside market, hippos in the river and the islands of the Niger were once the last stop before Mali.