(Non)-Trip Report: Niger

Niger – the country that “did not happen”

Niger was supposed to be my country 176/197. But it wasn’t. Instead, an incident in the country threw my entire West Africa itinerary into disarray. It’s not the first country I’ve booked and then missed – it’s happened time and again during the pandemic. However, it was the first country I missed while on the road just a day before entering it. I’m writing this article because it’s relevant to the trip reports for Morocco, Burkina Faso and Mali.

Niger is a country in West Africa that has gone through a lot since 2023. Until July 2023, Niger was a reliable partner of the so-called Western countries. Then a military coup overthrew the democratically elected president. Nothing new for Africa, but this coup was also an anti-colonial or anti-Western movement that forced the soldiers from the US, France, Germany and other countries stationed in Niger to leave the country.

French President Emanuel Macron threatened to invade Niger if the old order was not immediately restored, but this was nothing more than a bluff. The French, including the diplomatic staff, had to leave the country. What a humiliation for France by a country like Niger, which from then on looked for a new international partner: Russia.

These are just a few introductory words without going into too much detail about the political situation. For me, Niger should have been the first country on my last trip to West Africa after visiting every other country of this region from 2018 till now. I had planned to spend two full days in Niamey, the capital of Niger, a city that doesn’t offer much in the way of tourism, but unfortunately the flight schedule didn’t allow for a shorter visit. After that, I planned to fly on to Burkina Faso and Mali.

In the weeks leading up to my trip, I spoke with a well-known guide from Niger about a possible tour. We were a group of three travelers and basically knew what we wanted to do in Niamey. The only obstacle between us and the guide was the outrageously high prices, e.g. 250 Euros for a three-hour river trip.

The guide then told us to just say what we were willing to pay, so about a week before the trip I sent him an offer: we would pay 400 euros for 1.5 days. Much less than he wanted, but I think a fair price for a country like Niger. You have to keep in mind that the average monthly wage in Niger is probably half of that.

Our guide’s reaction? He said that we shouldn’t come, it was too dangerous for us…

As the price discussions with this gentleman were already difficult, I thought this was a negotiating tactic, a bluff. I replied that in this case we would just stay in the hotel and expected him to make me another offer in response to my counter-bluff. But he didn’t. I didn’t hear anything more from him.

Three days before the trip, I wrote to him to ask what was going on. In the meantime, our tour group had already been reduced from three to two because one of us had a family emergency. The guide then replied in relative detail…

A group of 14 people from a well-known travel company had been arrested on the street in Niamey. They were interrogated for two days and spent the rest of the time in their hotel. They didn’t really see anything of Niger. The guide said that the new military government sees foreigners as something to be worried about and treats them accordingly. He advised me and the other person in our tour group several times that we shouldn’t come. It would not be the right time,

At that point I was still convinced that I would go. I wrote to another guide, but he was hard to reach as he was in Chad at the time. My hotel said there was no problem and that everything was the same. So it didn’t sound too bad.

But the day I left for Morocco, the day before I was to fly to Niger, there were new details from the arrested group. Facebook posts and WhatsApp messages from people in the group were circulating, and I tried to talk to someone who was part of the group. I did so relatively quickly.

On the way to the airport (still in Switzerland), I spent 15 minutes on the phone with a gentleman who told me what he had experienced. I’ll try to describe the whole thing as I understood it, although I may not get all the details right. But in general, the story was as follows:

Originally, the group was supposed to go on a longer tour outside of Niamey. For security reasons, this requires a military escort. However, a few days before the trip, the group was informed that there would be no military escort because it was too dangerous. This meant that the trip to towns like Zinder and Agadez had to be canceled. However, the group was assured that they would be able to stay in Niamey and move around freely.

Upon arrival at the airport, the entire group had their passports taken away, which seems to be common practice in Niger these days. They were told they could pick up their passports in the next few days. When they explored the city the next day, they were arrested after 15 minutes and taken to a courthouse or similar.

There they were accused of being spies working for the French and American military. The group of 14 came from various Western countries. However, there was no one from France, but two Americans. The group was told that French and Americans were not allowed to stay in the country. Neither were any other tourists, as tourism had recently been banned. They all had valid visas, but the secret police or whoever interrogated them said that all visas were invalid.

The whole group was then questioned, one by one. They were standing in some courtyard at 38°C and apparently someone was pointing a gun at them. Every six hours, the guides were allowed to bring water and sandwiches for the group. In the evening, the group was then allowed to go to the hotel for the night. And the next day they had to go there again and got questioned again for the entire day.

This is the short version of the story. The man I spoke to on the phone assured me that they were not harmed or threatened. Nevertheless, it was an extremely unpleasant situation and most of them left the country as soon as possible.

So what should I do in this situation? I had this information from someone who was directly affected and the guide told me not to come. I tried to get more information, e.g. I wrote in a facebook group whether anyone had entered Niger in the past few days and whether everything went well. The fact that the moderators took almost a day to activate my question certainly didn’t help either.

Under these circumstances, I decided not to go. I thought that it could have been a single incident and that everything might have turned out well. However, the guide didn’t want to do another tour with us either, so I thought that in the best-case scenario I would have done my time in the hotel because it would have been too risky for me to see the city without local contact.

The best case scenario didn’t sound so good and the worst case scenario would have meant that I would have suffered the same fate as this tour group. Either way, if I hadn’t canceled, the stress level would have been quite high from that moment until my departure from Niger. For this reason, I thought it was a better decision not to go.

What also stopped me from going was the risk of never getting a visa for Niger again if I got arrested. So if I had spent all my time in a government building or hotel, I don’t know if that would have been enough to count the country as “visited”.

The second person in our group decided to go after all. At this point, my decision had already been made. I wished her good luck and stayed in contact with her. In the end, she survived the two days without any incidents. The people were nice and she saw what she wanted to see. In the meantime, other people have also responded to my post and said that everything went well for them.

In retrospect, it was therefore a mistake not to go, but I had to make a decision on very short notice and with the limited information I had. As a result, I now have to travel to West Africa again, only to Niger, which will cost me about 1000 Euros extra. My visa is still valid until mid-February, so let’s see…

Unfortunately, the cancellation of Niger also had a direct impact on the rest of the trip, as I lost a day in Burkina Faso due to the new flight route (I had to fly from Morocco to Burkina) and was not able to do the tour I actually wanted to do. All of this is extremely annoying, but as they say, it is what it is. I will probably travel to Niger again next year and hope that there will be no more incidents of this kind and that everything will be okay again.

The Niger cancellation did have one positive outcome: I spent three extra days in Morocco. Until then, I had only seen Marrakesh, and Morocco was always one of the countries I wanted to visit first on a longer trip, once I was done with all 197 countries.

So now I’ve seen two more places in Morocco I hadn’t planned to. You can read the trip report here.

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Click here to find the trip reports of the 170+ other countries I have visited so far!