Niger, Resources, Budgets, and Security

I’ve been following Niger’s recently launched five-year, $2.5 billion Security and Development Strategy (SDS). The program aims to address economic grievances in the north and across the country while bolstering security, all in the hopes of avoiding the chaos that plague Mali currently and avoiding a repeat of rebellions Niger has faced in the past.

One of the key questions facing SDS is how to fund it. The European Union has pledged $118 and other foreign partners will presumably contribute. Yet much of the funding, it seems, is expected to come from the Nigerien government itself. Some of that funding, in turn, is expected to come from rents derived from oil production and uranium mining.

That’s why the headline “Niger Cuts Budget by 7% on Oil Revenue Shortfall” caught my eye:

Niger, one of the world’s newest oil-producing nations, has reduced its 2012 budget by nearly 7 percent to 1.35 trillion CFA francs in response to lower government income.

The revision is the third since the budget was adopted late last year and is due largely to projected shortfalls in customs duties and revenues from its energy sector.

The government increased spending by 10 percent in July to cope with drought and conflicts along its porous borders, including an Islamist occupation of northern Mali.

[...]

According to [a televised government] statement, state oil profits for the year were expected to reach 4 billion CFA francs, far short of an earlier projection of 33.5 billion CFA francs.

According to this converter, the revised budget comes out at around $2.7 billion. For comparison’s sake, a fifth of SDS’ projected budget (i.e., the rough amount the government would spend on the program each year for five years) is $0.5 billion. That’s a big expenditure in this context. And if oil revenues fall short of expectations, it may be hard for the government to fund SDS on the scale of its ambitions – great though the need for the program is – without making sacrifices in other areas or securing more outside assistance.

More on Security and Development in Niger

Last week I wrote about Niger’s new $2.5 billion, five-year program (“SDS”) for security and development in its northern regions. Yesterday I went up at World Politics Review with a piece that looks more closely at SDS and also discusses past (and hopefully future) efforts at security and development in northern Mali.

There are two additional points worth making here:

First, to amplify what I said in the article, it is unclear where much of SDS’ budget will come from. Niger’s government may hope that profits from uranium and oil will help fund SDS. Yet these industries are themselves partly the cause of dissatisfaction in some communities in Niger. This dissatisfaction has taken the form of strikes at uranium mines and, this week, a strike by fuel truck drivers.

Witnesses in Zinder, where the refinery is located, said there were hundreds of trucks parked around the town in observance of the strike call.

Niger inaugurated the 20,000 barrel-per-day Soraz refinery in November 2011 hoping it would make Niger fuel self-sufficient and bring down prices.

But the refinery, 60 percent owned by Chinese state oil company CNPC and 40 percent by Niger, has been plagued by problems, including violent demonstrations by protesters complaining that fuel remains unaffordable.

Zinder (map) is, of course, in southern Niger, but the Zinder Region is one of six targeted by SDS.* Major uranium mines also lie within the targeted regions. If Niger’s government does not address complaints about working conditions, revenue flows, and other problems in the uranium and oil industries, those complaints may undermine the program’s overall goal of reducing grievances in the north and elsewhere.

The second point is that Niger is not just worried about instability in the far north, but is also concerned about a spillover of violence from neighboring Nigeria, where Boko Haram continues to launch attacks. In advance of an upcoming visit by Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan to Niger later this month, Nigerien authorities are calling for joint border patrols. Even as Niger keeps one eye on Mali and the north, then, the other watches Nigeria and the south.

*News reports have emphasized the idea of SDS as a program targeting the north, but the program is virtually national in scope. I am still making up my mind about how to characterize its geographical focus. Comments welcome.

A Development Plan for Northern Niger

Reuters:

Niger will spend nearly $2.5 billion to develop and secure its vast northern desert zones over the next five years, according to a new plan aimed at preventing the spillover of a conflict that has split neighbouring Mali in two.

[...]

The money is due to be spent on strengthening law and enforcement and border controls in an area where government authority is weak and traffickers and gunmen, some with links to al Qaeda, operate.

Funds will also target improving basic social services and infrastructure in the six most northern regions, where underdevelopment has led to previous rebellions.

[...]

The new plan, known as SDS/Sahel-Niger, will cost 1.266 trillion CFA francs ($2.49 billion), according to Prime Minister Brigi Raffini, himself a Tuareg, who launched the initiative late on Monday.

At least half of the programme will be funded by the government in Niamey while the European Union has pledged a further 91.6 million euros ($118 million), according to documents seen by Reuters. It was not immediately clear where the rest of the money would come from.

Niger 24 (French) has more on the launch event for the program. “SDS” stands for “Strategy for Development and Security.” Rafael Aguirre of the EU delegation to Niger emphasized both sides of the program, speaking of maintaining order and securing borders but also of creating employment opportunities and strengthening social services in areas like health and education. The website Niger Diaspora (French) has even more on the event.

Niger Diaspora also conducted an interview (French) with the program’s Executive Secretary, Mr. Najim Elhadj Mohamed, last week. In the interview Mohamed gives more details on the program: it will cover the regions of Tillabéry, Tahoua, Agadez, Maradi, Zinder, and Diffa (map of Niger here). The interview also discusses the program’s relationship to other national strategy plans in Niger, and I recommend reading it in full. Unfortunately I was not able to find any information on Mohamed’s professional background.

Many people have wondered how Niger, which borders Mali and has experienced Tuareg-led rebellions in the past, has avoided sharing Mali’s fate this year. Various factors seem to be at work, including the different styles and strategies of former Malian President Amadou Toumani Toure and current Nigerien President Mahamadou Issoufou. The Nigerien government has made significant efforts at reaching out to Tuaregs in its own territory, including by appointing a Tuareg prime minister (note the symbolism, too, of having Raffini launch SDS). The existence of SDS, however, indicates that authorities in Niamey are still nervous about the north, nervous about Niger’s borders with Mali and Libya, and anxious to prevent dissension and unrest. It is significant too that the plan is nearly nationwide in scope.

Readers may recall that Mali launched its own northern development and security initiative in 2011 – too little, too late, to prevent a rebellion, as it turned out. That program, however, had a much smaller budget than SDS ($69 million in Mali versus $2.5 billion for SDS). And from what experts on Mali now say about corruption and the hollowing out of institutions under Toure, it seems that Niger starts now from a much better place, politically, than Mali did last year. We’ll see how SDS turns out.

Some Good News from Niger

There is so much bad news from the Sahel that it is worth highlighting some of the good. This is not to deny that Niger, one of the poorest countries in the world, has terrible problems: just today, an Oxfam release says that the “worst flooding in more than 80 years [is] affecting half a million people in Niger.” But there are also some bright spots:

Reuters:

Speaking on state-owned radio, the agriculture ministry’s director of statistics Harouna Ibrahima said grain production was expected to rebound.

“All of the country’s eight regions have registered better results for millet, sorghum and maize than the previous harvest. We’re hoping for production comparable to 2010,” he said late on Wednesday.

Whereas Niger faced a grain deficit of around 500,000 tonnes this season, provoking a food crises that affected 6 million people, it produced a 1 million tonne surplus in 2010.

IRIN:

Niger has nearly halved the death rate of children below five years old since 1998, a significant drop highlighting the benefits of free universal health care for children and pregnant women as well as increased donor funding for health, The Lancet said in a study released on 20 September.

The mortality rate reduced from 226 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1998 to 128 deaths in 2009, an annual rate of decline of 5.1 percent, said the study, noting that the slump bettered the fourth Millennium Development Goal (MDG) to cut the child mortality rate by two-thirds between 1990 and 2015. Niger’s achievement was also far better than its neighbours in West Africa.

[...]

From the mid-1990s, the government embarked on efforts to attain universal access to primary health care for women and children, with the focus on expanding measures to reduce deaths from malaria, pneumonia, diarrhoea and measles. It also built more health centres in remote regions and trained staff. Between 1998 and 2010, official development assistance increased by 77 percent to US$744.5 million, said the study, entitled Reduction in child mortality in Niger: A Countdown to 2015 country case study.

The flooding is a deadly serious issue, as are the recurring problems of drought and hunger. But given its food shortages, limited resources, vulnerability to natural disasters, and location in an unstable and violent neighborhood, I would say that Niger and its government have weathered the crises of 2012 remarkably well. Here’s hoping that Niger’s agricultural production will rebound as projected and that the country can continue to build on its achievements in mortality reduction.

Update on Cholera Outbreaks in West Africa

Cholera is a recurring problem in parts of West Africa, but this year it has caused even more alarm than usual. An outbreak in Gao, northern Mali, along with elevated numbers of cases in other parts of the region, has drawn major concern. More background here.

One zone of concern is Niger, which has recently suffered a one-two punch of floods and cholera:

Floods in Niger have killed 81 people since July, the UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs announced Thursday, adding cholera outbreaks have killed a further 81 people.

[...]

Cholera is spreading fast in at least four places, making 3,854 people sick and notably affecting the Tillaberi regions lying by the Niger river and close to the border with Mali, OCHA said.

In the provinces and in the capital, where the Niger river level is rising significantly, most of the people stricken by flooding are being housed mainly in schools, as well as mosques and public buildings.

OCHA’s Niger page is available in French here.

Some worry that the cholera epidemic in Niger could spread to neighboring Burkina Faso (French).

Meanwhile, some coastal West Africa countries are experiencing major cholera outbreaks. By late August, some 12,500 people had contracted cholera in Sierra Leone, and the disease had killed 224. The Financial Timeswrote, “The World Health Organisation estimates the number of cases could reach 32,000, with the outbreak peaking towards the end of September. The mortality rate of 1.8 per cent is almost double the emergency threshold.” This is Sierra Leone’s worst outbreak since 1994. Cholera has also struck in Guinea, with nearly 6,000 cases and over 100 deaths, in the worst outbreak since 2007.

The World Health Organization, Doctors Without Borders, and the Red Cross/Red Crescent are working to vaccinate people in affected countries and treat victims. But the epidemic, it seems, is still growing, adding to the tragedies West Africa is facing this year.

Sahelian Food Crisis: Portraits from Niger and Mali

Two days ago, UNICEF spokesman Patrick McCormick stated that next week will likely see the “peak of admissions of children suffering from severe acute malnutrition into centres across the Sahel.” As he pointed out, the crisis is exacerbated by a number of factors, including locusts, the armed conflict in northern Mali, and human displacement from war and drought.

In Niger, described as the “worst affected country” in the Sahel by McCormick, some 161,000 children under five years old had severe acute malnutrition based on a survey taken at the beginning of July.
In Chad, the agency has seen the monthly caseload doubled compared to 2010, with 630 children under five admitted to treatment centres.
The next few weeks will be “critical to see whether we can keep things under control and the funding coming in to treat the children with the special food they need which is incredibly expensive”, said McCormick.

Deutsche Welle profiles a program in Niger that is trying to make a difference amid desperation:

Because of the drought in the Sahel, oxen and cows have hardly anything to eat. [The German NGO] Welthungerhilfe buys the weakest cattle from the farmers at a price which they would never get if they went to market. In and around [the village of] Yatakala these animals now end up in cooking pots and save human lives.

Willi Kohlmus is Welthungerhilfe’s regional director for Africa. He says they are trying to do everything they can to stop people leaving the area, because that would be the worst that could happen. “It would mean they would stop growing crops and the next harvest would also be a disaster. That in turn would mean more dependence on foreign aid, in refugee camps,” he warns.

The strain of displacement is visible in Mali:

Thousands of families in Bamako and other cities are facing the same challenge: how to accommodate and care for dozens of extra relatives, mostly children, when they are already struggling to cope with high food prices and too little income. Conflict across the north has displaced some 70,000 Malians, who are now mainly living in Bamako and Mopti, an inland port on the Niger River in central Mali.
The country is being squeezed on economic, political and military fronts. “We’re fighting a lot of fires at once here,” said Information Minister Hamadoun Touré. With formal sector unemployment at 30 percent in good times, investment in the mining sector down, the bulk of multilateral and bilateral development aid suspended, and zero tourism activity, the country could be on its way to a “complete economic standstill”, said one seasoned Malian development worker.

Refugee flows out of Mali have increased hardship in neighboring countries.

Some Malian pastoralists are also finding the current situation unsustainable:

Hundreds of pastoralists in the Mopti Region of central Mali are stuck between floodplains to the south and armed Islamists and rebels to the north. They are used to the hardship of successive droughts across the Sahel, but with little or no aid for their animals and severely limited access to pasture, many are becoming desperate as their livelihood and way of life becomes increasingly untenable.

“It’s all over – it’s finished,” Ibrahim Koita, head of the Society of Social Welfare in Mopti Region, told IRIN in the capital, Bamako, where he is trying to pressure donors for more aid.

Aid is coming in – Canada recently pledged $10 million – but the situation remains grim.

Give and Take in Niger’s Relationship with China

Yesterday, Reuters reported that Niger had “succeeded in renegotiating the terms of a $980 million loan from China’s Export-Import Bank that covered the cost of building an oil refinery in the east of the West African nation.” In contrast to the standard image of China as predator and Africa as prey, the article suggests some give-and-take:

The government called for an audit of the cost of the 20,000 barrel-per-day Soraz plant just days before it opened in November after the price tag rose to $980 million from the $600 million agreed at signing.

[...]

Niger signed a $5 billion joint venture deal with Chinese oil company CNPC in 2008 to build the refinery and develop crude oil from the Agadem field a further 700 km east.

China’s Exim Bank initially made the loan at an interest rate of 3.5 percent reimbursable over 10 year, but lowered the rate to 3.1 during negotiations last year.

Now the interest rate on the loan will be capped at 2%.

It is also noteworthy that China’s investments in Niger are starting to go beyond oil and uranium. In March, China’s Sinolight announced plans to build a sugar refinery there. President Mahamadou Issoufou has stated his desire for China to invest in Nigerien agriculture and infrastructure.

This is not to say that China’s presence in Niger is problem-free or benevolent. The 2008 oil deal drew protest from trade unions and civil society groups, who said the deal-making had lacked transparency, and who voiced concerns about whether the oil wealth would reach ordinary citizens. China has been accused of backing President Mamadou Tandja (who was overthrown in a coup in 2010), even when Tandja was attempting to consolidate power extra-constitutionally. In 2010, workers in northern Niger decried conditions at a Chinese mining site, describing it as a “colony” and nicknaming it “Guantanamo.”

The relationship, then, is not simple. As the renegotiation of the loan reminds us, though, neither is it unidirectional.

For more, see Jamestown’s valuable, although dated (2007) piece on Niger-China relations.

Cholera Spreads in Mali and Niger

Earlier this month, a cholera outbreak occurred around rebel-held Gao in northern Mali. Although aid agencies and relief organizations said that cholera cases for West Africa are lower this year than they were at the same point last year, the outbreak in Mali has created fears of a localized upsurge of cases in Mali and Niger. An outbreak also began around Tillaberi, Niger (map) in January. Within the zone of concern, the epidemic is now spreading:

A cholera epidemic in Niger has killed 58 people and spread to a refugee camp housing Malians who have fled the unrest in the north of their country, the UN said on Thursday.

“The overall number of cases reported as of 15 July is 2 900, with 58 deaths,” the UN’s Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a report issued from Niger’s capital Niamey.

“The number of cholera cases continues to increase [and] the … situation remains worrying with the arrival of the rainy season,” it added.

Cholera rarely spreads directly from person to person; rather, it spreads through contaminated water, especially in areas with poor sanitation. The article above does not say whether Malian refugees have carried the disease with them from Mali, but in any case the camps seem to have inadequate sanitation. As the crisis continues in Mali and the epidemic spreads in western Niger, cholera cases seem likely to increase in the sub-region.

For more, see AFP‘s report from Gao on how the interlocking crises of “conflict, hunger, cholera, and locusts” are killing people and disrupting life in northern Mali.

Cholera in the Sahel

News of an outbreak of cholera in Islamist-held Gao, northern Mali (map), has focused some international attention on the problem of cholera across the Sahel region. You can read about cholera’s causes, symptoms, and treatments here.

UNICEF (via VOA) released a statement this week expressing concern about the recent uptick in cholera cases in the western Sahel sub-region:

Since mid-June, the number of people affected by the deadly highly infectious water-borne disease has shot up in the Sahel, especially in Niger’s regions bordering the Niger River, where the Ministry of Health reports nearly three times as many cholera patients over the first half of 2012 compared to the same period last year.

Niger is home to about 400,000 children who are expected to require life-saving treatment for severe malnutrition this year.

Cholera is a recurrent threat throughout the Sahel. Last year, over 67,000 cholera cases were reported mainly around the Lake Chad Basin countries (Chad, Cameroon, Nigeria), with 2,153 deaths and an average case fatality rate of 3.2 per cent.

But this year, the outbreaks appear to be concentrated further to the west around Niger and Mali, where its impact is aggravated by massive displacement of people fleeing the conflict in northern Mali and puts more strain on the children already affected by an acute nutrition crisis. While cholera cases appeared in Cameroon, Niger and Nigeria earlier this year, several other Sahel countries are now facing significant risks, with a sharp increase of cases expected with the onset of the rainy season.

As IRIN summarizes, the number of cases in parts of the Sahel, such as the Lake Chad basin, is lower than it was in 2011, but in Mali and Niger the number is set to rise between August and December, which is peak cholera time.

Decreases in cases this year in countries like Chad and Guinea are due to a combination of acquired immunity, prevention methods, and vaccines.

The Red Cross has worked near Gao to prevent the spread of cholera there, supporting “a treatment centre set up on the spot by the health authorities to prevent the disease from spreading…Local radio stations have begun to broadcast warning messages and recommendations, and Mali Red Cross volunteers are going door to door to distribute treatment products and water.” The Islamist group the Movement for Unity/Tawhid and Jihad in West Africa (MUJWA) has also reportedly “told people not to drink the river water or bathe in it in a bid to contain the outbreak.”

Nevertheless, ongoing violence in northern Mali between various rebel groups could complicate efforts at prevention and treatment, potentially allowing the disease to spread. Cholera’s spread would add to the burdens Mali, Niger, and other countries in the sub-region already face, including displaced persons and lack of food. UNICEF, the Red Cross, and other organizations are stepping up their efforts to monitor and contain outbreaks, but the present chaos in northern Mali may well work against them.

Sahelian Governments Continue to Resist Extraditions to Libya

In March, a delegation headed by Libya’s Deputy Prime Minister Mustafa Abu Shagour attempted – and failed – to convince Mauritanian authorities to extradite Colonel Muammar Qadhafi’s former intelligence chief, Abdullah al Senussi, to Libya. About six weeks ago, a Mauritanian court indicted al Senussi, suggesting Mauritanian authorities’ desire to keep him in their country, where he was first arrested. On Wednesday, Libyan Prime Minister Abdel Rahim visited Mauritania (note that Libya sent an even higher-ranking official this time) and asked again for al Senussi’s extradition. AFP adds, “The head of Libya’s National Transitional Council (NTC), Mustafa Abdel Jalil, had on Tuesday reiterated his administration’s demand for Senussi’s extradition in a phone call to the Mauritanian president.” The Libyan government really wants al Senussi, but I am not sure they will get him.

Meanwhile, Niger reportedly remains unwilling to extradite Col. Qadhafi’s son Saadi back to Libya.

Since Gadhafi arrived [in Niamey], he has led a normal life, eating at restaurants and dancing at nightclubs early into the morning, according to restaurant and nightclub owners and local journalists.

Over the past three months, though, Niger’s government has ordered him to keep a low profile and stay inside his mansion, after comments he made to al-Arabiya television that he was in contact with Gadhafi loyalists and wanted to retake power in Libya.

At the same time, Niger’s government has refused to extradite him, saying that Gadhafi would never receive a fair trial, raising tensions with Libya’s new rulers. “We won’t accept this demand,” said Morou Amadou, Niger’s justice minister. “We won’t extradite someone where he is certain to face the death penalty.”

Here at the blog, commenters and I have puzzled over Sahelian governments’ reasons for such refusals before, without coming to any definitive conclusions. The article excerpted above is worth reading in full, as it notes lingering loyalties to Qadhafi (the father) in Niger but also mentions Niger’s incentives to cooperate with the new government in Libya.   Maybe the loyalties outweigh the other incentives, at least for now.

Sahelian governments may also be internally divided on these issues. The case of Tunisia is instructive:

A row inside Tunisia’s ruling alliance over the extradition of Libya’s former prime minister took a fresh turn late on Monday [June 25] after reports that he had suffered a beating in a Libyan jail.
[...]
Tunisia’s post-revolution political alliance had already been plunged into crisis over the affair.
President Moncef Marzouki is furious that Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali ordered Mahmudi’s transfer to Libya without his consent.
Marzouki had always opposed the extradition, arguing that Libya’s new regime offered insufficient guarantees of a fair trial. But when Jebali approved the move Sunday [June 24], the president was in southern Tunisia for an official ceremony.
Marzouki, a veteran human rights activist did not sign the extradition order and, according to his adviser, he only found out about Mahmudi’s transfer through the media.
The presidency “considers this decision is illegal, all the more so because it has been done unilaterally and without consulting the president of the republic,” a statement from Marzouki’s office said late Sunday.

Mauritania and Niger may fear, then, that handing over their respective prisoners to the Libyans could result in news of torture, news that might play badly with domestic constituencies in the Sahel and cause public relations headaches. Or, simpler still, perhaps the Sahelian governments simply prefer keeping these controversial figures in their own hands for as long as possible, because in that way they have the most control.

What is your read of these situations?