Stories: Niger
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‘A City Lost in the Desert’: A Visit to the Sahara’s Uranium Capital
In May 2013, a car bomb detonated near the Somair uranium mine in Arlit, in northern Niger, killing one person. Moments earlier, in Agadez, some 150 miles south, Al Qaeda-affiliated militants waged an assault on Nigerien army positions that killed over 20 people. That same year, Niger’s two uranium mines produced...
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The Market for the One Energy Source That’s a Menace to Civilization Is Absolutely Mind-Boggling
Uranium isn’t like other commodities for one very simple reason: It’s impossible to vaporize an entire city with a single petroleum- or coal-based weapon that’s smaller than a two-seat car. What makes uranium so promising as a source of energy is also what makes it a potential menace to civilization. The problem,...
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One Uranium Mine in Niger Says a Lot About China’s Huge Nuclear-Power Ambitions
The odds of finding much of anything seem slim in northern Niger’s unnerving expanses of hazy white desert. The land is so vast, so untethered from any obvious landmarks that when straying just a few hundred feet off of the inconsistently paved road between Abalak and Agadez, it’s hard to shake the fear that the driver...
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Niger Is the Most Amazing Country I Never Expected to Visit
Chances are you'll never get to go to Niger. I never thought I'd get to go there either. Boaters on the Niger River in Niamey, the country's capital. It's landlocked and mostly desert. The only non-African cities that offer direct flights are Paris and Istanbul. The desert northeast used to get tourists who wanted to...
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Inside the Amazing Chinese-Built Luxury Hotel in the Capital of One of the World’s Poorest Countries
Food options are limited in northern Niger, but one dietary staple is readily available just about everywhere I went in the vast, landlocked West African country. From remote highway rest stops to the sidewalks in front of the ministry buildings in downtown Niamey, entire sides of lamb sit cooking for hours, fat crackling under meaty columns of smoke. A...
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Niger’s Desert North Is a Glimpse Into the Destructive Brilliance of Gaddafi’s 42 Years in Power
The Grand Mosque of Niamey, built with Libyan government funding in the 1970s, is a beaming adobe with a prism of latticed archways capped with a brilliant green dome, glittering and unscathed after decades under the Sahelian sunlight and dust. The Grand Mosque of Niamey. The Grand Mosque dominates a vast open expanse: It’s one of the...
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Here’s How People Make Ends Meet in One of the Poorest Places in the World
Niger is a country at peace. But a World Food Program distribution site in Torouf — a village about an hour’s drive from the city of Tahoua — seemed lifted out of a conflict zone. Sacks of millet emblazoned with the logo of the United States Agency for International Development awaited villagers clutching yellow ration cards. Staffers...
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An Oil Dispute in Niger Is Exposing Big Problems With Chinese Investment in Africa
On August 14, a compressor failed at the Soraz oil refinery near Zinder, Niger, crippling one of the very few pieces of industrial infrastructure in one of the poorest countries in the world. The thing is, there may never have been a compressor blowout. According to multiple energy-industry sources who spoke with Business Insider, the shutdown of the Soraz...
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India Battles Malnutrition With Local Product
Inside a small shack in Mumbai’s largest slum, Dr. Evelet Sequeira struggles to coax a 3-year-old girl onto a baby scale. Sequeira is with a local aid organization called SNEHA that wants to know how many children in the slum have slipped from a stage of moderate malnutrition to what’s known as severe acute malnutrition. &ldquo...;