When was Niger founded?
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Niger or Niger State is a state in Central Nigeria and the largest state in the country. The state capital is Minna, and other major cities are Bida, Kontagora, and Suleja. It was formed in 1976 when the then North-Western State was bifurcated into Niger State and Sokoto State. It is home to Ibrahim Babangida and Abdulsalami Abubakar, two of Nigeria's former military rulers. The Nupe, Gbagyi, Kamuku, Kambari, Dukawa, Hausa and Koro form the majority of numerous indigenous tribes of Niger State.
Niger State
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The persistent uranium price slump has brought lower revenues for Niger's uranium sector, although uranium still provides 72% of national export proceeds. The nation enjoyed substantial export earnings and rapid economic growth during the 1960s and 1970s after the opening of two large uranium mines near the northern town of Arlit. When the uranium-led boom ended in the early 1980s, however, the economy stagnated and new investment since then has been limited. Niger's two uranium mines (SOMAIR's open pit mine and COMINAK's underground mine) are owned by a French-led consortium and operated by French interests.
Exploitable deposits of gold are known to exist in Niger in the region between the Niger River and the border with Burkina Faso. Substantial deposits of phosphates, coal, iron, limestone, and gypsum also have been found. Numerous foreign companies, including American firms, have taken out exploration licenses for concessions in the gold seam in western Niger, which also contains deposits of other minerals.
Economy of Niger
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Niger obtained independence from France in 1960, and at the time established relations with the government of Israel, although Niger never established a permanent mission there. During the early 1960s, several Israeli development programmes, mostly concerned with exchange of experts in agricultural development in arid regions, were established in Niger. The Israeli government also helped in the founding of the Young Pioneers of Niger, a national youth and civil group. In the mid 1960s, Niger opened an embassy in Israel. Following the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, Nigerien popular and government feelings toward Israel cooled. The Israeli government for its part disapproved of Niger's closer relations with Libya, beginning in 1969. The continued Israeli conflict with its neighbors, increased pressure from allies like Libya, and the movement of a number of African nations in a similar direction, caused the Republic of Niger to formally end all diplomatic relations with the government of Israel on 1 January 1973.
Israel–Niger relations
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Niger was a child prodigy, studying Talmud until the age of 17 at yeshivas in Berezin and Minsk. He was preparing for rabbinic ordination when he instead moved into the secular and political world, having become attracted to secular culture and Zionism. In 1904, he co-founded the Zionist Socialist Workers Party, and was a writer for the party paper "Der Nayer Veg" ("The New Path"). He was imprisoned and tortured for his political activity several times in Minsk, Kiev, Warsaw, Daugavpils (Dvinsk), Odessa, and Vilna, but he avoided execution after the intervention of family and friends.
Shmuel Niger
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The party was founded in 1990 by Rhissa Ag Boula, with Mohamed Abdoullahi becoming party president in 1992. In the 1993 parliamentary elections it received only 463 votes, but won a single seat in the National Assembly. Following Mahamane Ousmane's victory in subsequent the presidential elections the party joined the ruling Alliance of the Forces of Change, with the UDPS' Ben Wahab Aïchatou became Niger's first female minister when she was appointed Minister of Traditional Commerce and Arts.
Union for Democracy and Social Progress (Niger)
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At the same time, British scientists were interested in exploring the course and related settlements along the Niger River. The delta masked the mouth of the great river, and for centuries Nigerians chose not to tell Europeans the secrets of the interior. In 1794 the African Association in Great Britain commissioned Mungo Park, an intrepid Scottish physician and naturalist, to search for the headwaters of the Niger and follow the river downstream. Park reached the upper Niger the next year by travelling inland from the Gambia River. Although he reported on the eastward flow of the Niger, he was forced to turn back when his equipment was lost to Muslim Arab slave traders. In 1805 he set out on a second expedition, sponsored by the British Government, to follow the Niger to the sea. His mission failed, but Park and his party covered more than , passing through the western portions of the Sokoto Caliphate, before drowning when their boats overturned in rapids near Bussa.
Colonial Nigeria
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Medieval European maps applied the name "Niger" to the middle reaches of the river, in modern Mali, but "Quorra (Kworra)" to the lower reaches in modern Nigeria, as these were not recognized at the time as being the same river. When European colonial powers began to send ships along the west coast of Africa in the 16th and 17th centuries, the Senegal River was often postulated to be the seaward end of the Niger. The Niger Delta, pouring into the Atlantic through mangrove swamps and thousands of distributaries along more than , was thought to be no more than coastal wetlands. It was only with the 18th-century visits of Mungo Park, who travelled down the Niger River and visited the great Sahelian empires of his day, that Europeans correctly identified the course of the Niger and extended the name to its entire course.
Niger River
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Niamey was probably founded in the eighteenth century, but was of little importance to most of the country until the French developed a colonial post in the 1890s. This rapidly grew into an important centre. In 1926 it became the capital of Niger, and the population gradually increased, from about 3,000 in 1930 to around 30,000 in 1960.
The period from 1970 to 1988 was one in which the economy of Niger boomed, driven by revenue from the uranium mines at Arlit. In this period, the population of Niamey grew from 108,000 to 398,365 inhabitants. The city expanded from in 1970 to by 1977, in the process annexing peripheral villages such as Lazaret.
Niamey
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The Evangelical Church of the Republic of Niger was founded in 1961. The congregations have considerable autonomy, so unity was very difficult to establish. It has 3,000 members, 31 congregations, and 59 house fellowships. A member of the World Communion of Reformed Churches.
Partner church relationship with the Reformed Church in America was also established.
Evangelical Church of the Republic of Niger
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The Second Tuareg insurgency in Niger began in 2007 when a previously unknown group, the Mouvement des Nigeriens pour la Justice (MNJ), emerged. The predominantly Tuareg group issued a number of demands, mainly related to development in the north. It attacked military and other facilities and laid landmines in the north. The resulting insecurity devastated Niger's tourist industry and deterred investment in mining and oil. Algeria helped negotiate an August 2008 Malian peace deal, which was broken by a rebel faction in December, crushed by the Malian military and wholesale defections of rebels to the government. Niger saw heavy fighting and disruption of Uranium production in the mountainous north, before a Libyan backed peace deal, aided by a factional split among the rebels, brought a negotiated ceasefire and amnesty in May 2009.
History of Niger