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1 267 000 Km2 including 800 000 Km2 of desert:
Aïr and Ténéré
Saharian climate in the North, sahelian in the
remainder of the country
The Niger river, 3rd in Africa, crosses the
country over 500 km
12 500 000 inhabitants - 9 hab/Km2 - urban Population:
23 %
50
% of the population are old less than 15 years.
Adopted
in 1960, year of accession to independence,
the flag native of Niger presents three horizontal
bands.
The
higher band symbolizes by its orange color the
desert areas of the Sahara which borders north
of the country.
The
white band shelters in its center an orange
circle in reference to the sun. The green color
of the lower band indicates the fertile Niger
river and its valleys and means "the hope"
The
mosque of Agades, clay fact built at the beginning of
the 16th century
Principal
cities: Niamey (capital - 800 000 hab.), Zinder,
Maradi,Tahoua, Agadez
Official Language: French. The most spoken
language: Haoussa
Ethnic groups: Haoussa (53%), Djerma (21%),
Tuareg (11%), Peulh (10%), Kanouri, Toubou.
Religion: Muslims (85%), Animisms, Christians
Community network and very dense associative
fabric
 ...
about the role of Tuareg women
....
concerning cultural resources of Tuareg people facing
of development challenges
Rice
plantations along the Niger river around Niamey
The
basin of the Niger river concentrates the
essence of agriculture, the economy and population
Mining Resources: uranium, iron, gold, oil,
coal, phosphate, limestone, salt
GNP: 2M. € - PNB per capita: 200 €
-
Budget of the State: 26% of the GDP
Trade Balance: chronical deficit
Debt: 2M €
Indicating of Human Development (IDH): 0,206-
rank IDH: 173/174...
More
Borrowed
survival. Imported technologies. In debtfuture....
Misery? Delay? Residue of a History? Dependence?
Periphery of a world?
No data says...
More
Niger
must be visited. Very few people know this country.
It is an unforgettable experience.It offers
to the visitor an invaluable gift: a beautiful,
simple and hard,human too human with creative
people and oneiric lives in landscapes of a
rare beauty and in heteroclite cities but with
a spirit which runs everywhere and at any moment,
a young spirit, unmethodical, hospitable, colored.Alive.
Niamey,
the capital of Niger, is a strong city by its
ethnic mixtures, its paradoxes which mix the
life of the box and the world of the city and
by the manner in which people cope with little
in little and to remain standing up with nothing.
Agadez, formerly targuie capital, legendary
city of North for the travelers and the merchants
since hundreds of years, show in the mountains
of Aïr and the desert of Ténéré,
where all seems motionless but where colors,
the lights, times and the forms are repeated
and changing.It is there where the kingdom of
the nomads is: infinite sand dunes, mountainous
citadels, magic sunrises and sunsets. Where
it is so difficult to survive that those which
resist humbly and collectively gain in nobility
and freedom. There still the daily tasks consisting
in making goat's milk cheese and walking all
day long to supply themselves out of water and
to find grass for the goats.
But
there is also, here and there, the hidden oasis
which abound of fruits, as in Timia where small
rivers sprinkle the palm trees, the orchards
of orange trees, pomegranates, peach trees and
of date palms. There are the oasis of Ifeourane
and its Tuareg festivals. There is Sikerat where,
around wells and few means, secular stockbreeders
try to become gardeners. They seek to ensure
the autonomy of their subsistence and to offer
a school to their children to take up the challenge
of the cultural erosion which threatens them.
Vera
Chiodi & Birgit Hoh & Issyad Ag Kato
& Leo Dayan
Sikerat
School in the desert of Aïr
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Oasis
of Timia
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Water
fall in Timia
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The
valleys of Tefarat to Timia shelter the luxuriant oases
of Aïr mountains.
The oases in the heart of Aïr emerged to the foot of
old mountains, raised and fractured by a late volcanic activity
:
Iferouane au pied du Tamgak and Timia des Bagzanes.
The Tuaregs Kel Eweye, traditionally stockbreeders of goats,
became, here, gardeners. In this austere area strewn with
old volcanos craters, the mountainous oasis of Timia is
a harbour of greenery in a lunar but accessible universe.
Its houses in clay fact built and its palm plantation extends
to 200 kms from Agadez. More than one hundred of gardens
supplied with the "Noria" systems form attics
à ciel ouvert, full of corn, oranges, grapefruits,
dates, figs and mint which provide the market of Agadez.
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desert
of Ténéré
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The
Sahara is beautiful, but it is not only a desert,
wandering populations resist, wish to live there
and to protect it. The Tuareg nomads are people
with the strong but so modern identity: first localists
and mondialists at the same time. Free people but
faithful to their history and the values of a desert
which it can tame and which forges its myths and
its lives, even in the city.
Simple and immense lives, released from the borders
and time and which require to share the respect
and the recognition. You should know them, discover
the landscapes of which they are still the guards
and to share one moment of their fabulous world
and their humble lives.
The Sahara is vast but it is fragile. Pollution,
the absurd and the suffering reach it.
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Intercultural
Tuaregs ... with Argentinian "maté"
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