Contenu du sommaire : Stratégies territoriales d'adaptation aux contraintes démographiques et environnementales : le Niger

This article seeks to understand why food policies inspired by the dominant economic thinking and by international donors have failed to give a stop to hunger in Niger, for several decades. Chronologically, the paper first questions the credibility of national food strategies to curb food insecurity. It shows more precisely how they eventually became ineffective because of a lack of vision and a lack of clear and consistent guidance. It insists on the often ambiguous and controversial role played by networks of food vendors and international and humanitarian organizations. In view of the persistence of food crises and of their disastrous social and economic consequences, the article secondly questions the opportunity of the new “Initiative 3N” (Nigeriens Nourish Nigeriens) to meet the food challenges. Is it a simple paradigm with a nationalist sovereignty relent, to counter the popular uprisings and the pressure exerted by the international media, or the beginning of a hope in extricating Nigeriens from the throes of hunger and food insecurity ?

In 1954, the peasants of the Rural Municipality of Imanan, Western Niger, began to crop potatoes. From a simple extra culture, potato production has become an integral part of the local production system, as the main adaptive strategy of Imanan farmers to cope with food crises. This practice has spread to all the production units of the valley (Dallol Bosso) of Imanan, attracting more and more new players (youth, women, citizens, businesses and urban populations). Several factors related to economic fluctuations and social events, and policies contributed to its expansion. As a market oriented cash crop, it provides farmers an income which improves the livelihood of the families. The profitability of the potato results in a reduction of young men migrations during the dry season.

This paper addresses gender issue in the development of irrigation in Niger. Studies conducted in various sites in Niger show that access to agricultural water use in rice cultivation is a predominantly male activity. The few women present are generally without support, divorced or widowed, often with several children. Very discriminatory criteria, including being head of household, were used to prevent women of any access to irrigated rice. Moreover, because of the supposed hardship related to the cultivation of rice and it constraints, women are marginalized out from the rice production and its profits.

Since the 1990's, Agadez, has become a migratory crossroads for sub-Saharan Africans leaving for North Africa and/or Europe. Located in Northern Niger, Agadez is a contact zone between Niger and Algeria and between Niger and Libya. This geographical position favours the transit of thousands of would-be migrants. This transit has resulted, in addition to the creation and consolidation of migration networks and channels, in a contribution to population and economic growth of the city of Agadez in the years 1990 and 2000. The stay, control and exploitation of migrants has led to the setting-up of numerous activities. They provide a substantial income to the actors who accommodate the migrants and organize their departure and transport.

Since the late 1990s, Nigerians of all socio-professional categories appropriated mobile telephony. Several surveys of mobile telephony operators, social and professional groups (customers) and the Multisectoral Regulatory Agency (ARM), now become Telecommunications Regulatory Agency and Post (ARTP), have shown that the cell network has successfully integrated different territorial levels in Niger. At the city level, long marginalized outlying areas by public policies were integrated into the city center. Everywhere, points of sale and antennas have marked the urban landscape. Beyond the room, the neoliberal economic model imported from the West, has adapted to the realities of a regional economy dominated by the informal but more or less controlled and regulated by constantly renewed technological innovations in the field of mobile telephony.

Large cities are like a refuge for most of the rural young people who intend to emancipate themselves or to make both ends meet. In this line, they leave their villages after the rainy season, and they devote three-fourth of the year to their stay in the city. Thus, Niamey accommodates a large number of migrants who are sometimes in transit for the Maghreb. However, those who stay usually get disillusioned and helpless because the city is no longer the paradise they dream about. As a matter of fact, these excluded migrants use all possible types of strategies to survive, and sometimes they even set up specialized gangs. Therefore, this study aims at describing and showing the impacts of this poorly channeled migration on the security of the population. In this vein, surveys targeting the households, the authorities and the organized structures were conducted in order to understand the phenomenon, and the different groups' strategies. It comes out that the state has failed in its sovereign mission to ensure the safety of the people and their assets. In such a situation, the people and the legal established entities have adapted themselves by developing a community or individual private security system. However, far from being a panacea, the development of private security agencies enabled the national police force to achieve some undeniable successes, to contain the phenomenon to a lesser extent compared to some other capitals. However, the issue remains unsolved because the criminals have shown that they can adapt and the growing impoverishment of the unemployed youth makes feel that the next coming years will be worse.

Particularly vulnerable to climate change, the Niger River drainage basin has been for several decades under common management between nine countries, within the framework of the Niger Basin Authority (NBA). The recent revival of several water planning schemes and dam projects are part of a strategy for the basin adaptation and development. These new developments, often conceived in a national context, are based on the financial support of large international institutions, within the framework of the Niger Basin Climate Resilience Investment Plan (CRIP). The challenge for the NBA is to avoid a competition between projects or donors, which could weaken the overall basin governance. It works to promote gathering and sharing geographical informations within its Observatory and to integrate these projects in a five years planning period (until 2027). The involvement of water users into the basin governance and to insure the conditions for autonomous, sustainable fundings of this integrated management remain major issues.