Niger falls back off track

Abstract

In 2001, scholars identified a promising democratic transition in the Republic of Niger, following a coup d’état in 1999. Elites were ‘righting their political ship and getting their economy in order’. Political liberties were ‘generally assured’.1 However, Niger’s political trajectory has dashed these expectations. Elected in 2001, Nigerien president Mamadou Tandja would go on to provoke a constitutional crisis in 2009 and a military coup that unseated him in 2010. That coup was the third since Niger’s transition to multiparty democracy in 1991. Tandja’s successor, Mahamadou Issoufou, took office in 2011. Initially he enjoyed a strong democratic mandate but later used the war on terror in the greater Sahara as a red herring to curry international favour while cracking down on civil society. The country is seeing a spike in citizen protests, seemingly driven by limited economic mobility.2 By most measures, Niger is the least developed country in the world. It consistently ranks last in terms of the Human Development Index, a composite measure of income, life expectancy, and education. Its semiarid climate, harsh in normal times, becomes more vulnerable to drought as global warming parches fertile land and creates food shortages. Since 2001, thousands of Nigerien children have died from malnutrition despite a roughly 5 per cent economic growth rate.3 Tandja and Issoufou vowed to remedy these chronic problems and to restore democracy. Both presidents reneged spectacularly on that pledge.