Trip Report: Niger
Visited in January 2025
My trip to Niger had a history that began two and a half months earlier. Niger was supposed to be my country no. 177 and my first country on a trip through the Sahel states of Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali. Things turned out differently. Due to an incident, I had to skip Niger. I advise you to read the non-trip report for Niger before reading this article. Otherwise you will not understand some parts of this article.
…
I can’t remember ever needing so much time at Zurich airport from the time of my arrival until I was actually at the gate. At the Ethiopian Airlines check-in, I queued for over an hour. The online check-in didn’t work because I still had to show my Niger visa at the counter. Although I did not have checked baggage, I still had to queue. This was annoying because it took ages.
The reason for this was that the passengers were traveling with four to five suitcases on average and they all had to be checked in. Ethiopian allows two pieces of luggage, both of which can be 23 kg each. For some, this was clearly too little.
From afar, I witnessed the drama of a Congolese passenger who wanted to fly to Kinshasa but didn’t receive his boarding pass because he didn’t have a visa for DRC. Although he apparently thought he did, his Congolese roots were not enough to travel visa-free to his home country without an official document.
These were my first impressions of a weekend trip to Niger, the country I did miss in the very last minute two and a half months ago. As I didn’t have another country open in West Africa, this meant a separate trip just to Niger. I was going to leave on a Thursday evening and return the following Monday morning. After South Sudan and Angola, this was my third trip to Africa of this kind.
Next to me on the plane was a Swiss man with Ethiopian roots who was about to emigrate to Ethiopia. We chatted a bit, talked about life in Switzerland, life in Ethiopia and Ethiopian Airlines. We both agreed that the airline’s food was terrible, maybe even the worst of all major airlines. When it was served, we wished each other “good luck” and later toasted with Ethiopian’s Habesha beer.
Perhaps the only positive thing about Ethiopian Airlines, apart from the wide route network, is that they also fly when the plane is half empty. Or in the case of the flight from Addis Ababa to Niamey, the capital of Niger, only 10% full. Even after more than twenty flights, I have never experienced a flight cancellation with Ethiopian.
However, a glance at the few passengers revealed an interesting picture. Almost no white people, but many people in typical Nigerien costume, plus a few women in burkas. The few white people were all NGO workers, as it turned out later. The passengers were a stark contrast to other flights departing from Addis Ababa, for example at the gate next door to Victoria Falls. If you didn’t realize it before, you should know it now: Niger is not a tourist country.
Immigration in Niger
When I disembarked the aircraft in Niamey, I wondered how the police would react to my visa. I applied for the visa about five months ago and got it back relatively quickly in five days. But times have changed. Most, if not all, European embassies have now stopped issuing visas to tourists. Apparently, tourists are no longer welcome these days.
My visa was still valid for just over a week and posed no problem when I entered the country. However, there is one oddity when traveling to Niger these days. Your passport will be collected at the airport and you get a “recepisse de depot”, a piece of paper, with which you can pick the passport again before your return flight. Therefore, in Niger you cannot follow the iron rule of always having your passport on you or in your hotel.
What’s important: you don’t get the passport back at the airport, but at the so-called DST (Direction de la surveillance du territoire), the immigration office in the city. The problem for me was that, as far as I knew, the DST was not open on weekends. And since I arrived on a Friday and flew out on a Sunday, I wondered how I will get my passport back if the immigration office is not open.
The police at immigration insisted on this procedure. Despite asking three times, they assured me that the DST was open on Saturday and that I would get my passport back there. Contrary to expectations, the police were extremely friendly, which did not speak for the paranoia that apparently existed in this country towards foreigners.
For my two nights, I booked the Noom Hotel, a 5-star hotel. By European standards rather a 3-star, as is usual for 5-star hotels in Africa. Niamey doesn’t have a huge range of hotels or many budget options (Djoliba Lodge is otherwise a popular address among travelers). As there isn’t really much to see in Niamey, I decided to stay in a good hotel. I expected to spend more time there than elsewhere.
At check-in, the reception also asked how I would get my passport back. They said the DST was – as I had already assumed – closed until my departure. The hotel even went there to confirm that there would be no one in the DST on Saturday. We then drove to the airport again, where I was told that the passport was kept in an office there. They showed me where the office was and said I should pick it up before my flight.
To be honest, this made me uneasy. I imagined getting there early on Sunday morning and no one finding my passport. I really didn’t want that stress hours before my flight. But I tried to put it out of my mind and not worry about it again for two days. Because of dealing with this issue and the trip back to the airport, the first half day was already over anyway.
In the weeks before the trip, I was thinking about whether I should book a tour or ot. So I contacted the guide who gave me the advice not to come to Niger on my first trip two months earlier.
Before I booked the new flights to Niger, I had asked him about the process with the passport and the DST. It took a whole three weeks before he answered me, which I found a lousy service. Also on the advice of other travelers who were in Niamey, I was now leaning towards not booking a guide and exploring the capital on my own.
The guide contacted me again two weeks before my trip and said as a matter of course that he was preparing all necessary documents for my trip, although I never said that I was booking a tour with him again. He also tried to put pressure on me with lies, saying that according to the new rules, foreigners were not allowed to leave the hotel without a permit. Moreover, he became impatient and slightly annoyed when I didn’t reply within half a day.
That was the point at which I definitely decided against booking him. He accepted this decision, but continued to try to intimidate me. He told me about these new rules from the government and said I could read about them on the internet. And I tried to do that. Google news results for the last month: zero.
That afternoon, I walked around the hotel area a bit, but without any particular destination in mind. Sightseeing was then on the agenda for the next day. In the evening, I went to a bar called Concept near the hotel.
Niger is a Muslim country and my impression was that it was a rather strict one. But there was still a lot of drinking. Alcohol was served in my hotel (Niger has its own beer). In this bar, there was plenty of alcohol and people, locals and foreiigners, were enjoying it.
The crowd was a mix of the local elite and NGO employees. In fact, every white person in the country was an employee of some international organization. It is quite possible that I was the only tourist in the country that weekend. There were also women who looked like prostitutes. All in all, it was still less sleazy than what I saw in other West African capitals the years before.
Getting into trouble with the police
The next day I wanted to see more of Niamey. Admittedly, I struggled to find many interesting things in the capital of Niger. But I knew that in advance, because I had marked only four places I wanted to visit on Google Maps.
I was curious to find out how the people and especially the police would react to me. I had prepared a short walking tour for myself, as Niamey is a city where most of the sights can be seen on foot. The first place I wanted to see was the Niger River, the third longest in Africa, after which the country is named.
The walk from my hotel to the river only took a few minutes. My impressions were that people generally reacted friendly to me, since many greeted me. However, I also noticed that the city was full of police officers and soldiers. They were at practically every roundabout and intersection, but left me alone and didn’t pay too much attention to me.
I still didn’t want to play too much with fate and took photos as discreetly as possible. That’s what I do in most African capitals anyway, because that can often be reason enough for a policeman to demand a bribe from you.
I paid extra attention in Niger. Here I knew that bribes weren’t even the problem, but the paranoia of the military junta. One wrong photo and, in the worst case, you could end up in prison. When I snapped a photo, I immediately deleted it, only to restore it later from the recycle bin. A few hours later, it turned out that this was an excellent precautionary measure.
My overall impression was that Niamey was a typical West African capital. The city had paved roads, which were not too bad in comparison. The sidewalks, however, were partly broken and had holes in them. There was also a lot of sand, garbage and dust on the sidewalks, some small shops and houses that wouldn’t win any architectural awards. But I found that Niamey was a bit more modern than Ouagadougou and Bamako, the capital cities of Burkina Faso and Mali.
I stopped at the Grand Hôtel du Niger because it has a beautiful view of the Niger River, which is maybe even the best view in all of Niamey. The Grand Hôtel was probably once a great place to stay, but today it looked like an extremely outdated and neglected hotel, as is often the case with these “Grand Hotels” in Africa.
Nevertheless, I wasn’t interested in spending the night there, just having a drink and enjoying the view. The waiter chatted with me a bit and when I told him I was from Switzerland, he said, “Ah, Coopération Suisse”, an aid organization in Niamey. So the most obvious thing to him was that I worked for this organization.
I walked from the hotel to the Place de la Concertation. This was the place where the protests against the West, especially the French, took place after the military coup in 2023. The place was also full of police like no other. This was probably because the general office of the national police is right there. I would have loved to take pictures of the square, but it was too risky for me here, so I didn’t.
As I was about to turn into a street leading away from the square, a policeman stopped me and accused me of illegally taking pictures of the square. I had my phone in my hand because I used Google Maps open to get to my next location. That was probably enough suspicion for the policeman.
The policeman was about 50 years old and demanded that I give him my phone and open the gallery. Then he looked at the pictures in my gallery. At that moment I thought: “Thank God I deleted the pictures of the city right away.
Next, he wanted to see my recepisse de depot, the document you get when you leave your passport, which I had with me, of course. He also wanted to see a copy of my passport and a copy of my visa. I had those with me as well. I was extremely cautious for this trip and prepared accordingly.
He studied my documents for several minutes and also wanted to see my hotel room card. At the same time, he asked me what organization I worked for. When I told him I was a tourist, he asked me why I was in Niger. My answer that I liked traveling in Africa and wanted to see Niger after countries like Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal, etc. didn’t seem to convince him.
The situation was very unpleasant. The policeman wasn’t aggressive, but he spoke to me in an authoritarian tone. After 14 tourists had been arrested for no reason and interrogated for two days in this city two and a half months ago, I had the feeling that I could face the same fate. I also knew that this situation was not about money.
What made it even more difficult was that the whole conversation took place in French. The policeman didn’t speak a word of English, and my French is limited to what I learned in school over 15 years ago. This means that it is sufficient for basic conversation in French-speaking countries. But it was definitely not good enough for a discussion like this.
As the policeman studied my recepisse de depot for several minutes, I had the feeling that he was trying to find another reason to cause me trouble. He looked at my phone again and I my gut told me he was looking for the recycle bin but couldn’t find it.
Instead, he found the pictures I had taken of the Noom Hotel. He asked me why I had done that. I tried to explain that, as a tourist, I wanted to show my friends and family back home what the place I was vacationing in looked like. Unfortunately, I couldn’t think of the word “show” in French, so I asked him to give me back my cell phone so I could use the translator. But he didn’t.
In the end, he let me go. However, he warned me that I needed a permit to take pictures of Niamey and that I would be arrested if I took any more pictures of the city. As I said, a very unpleasant situation that would probably have been easier with a guide. I would advise anyone going to Niamey to be very careful when taking photos and either delete them immediately or move them to a secure folder.
Afterwards I visited the Niamey Mall (absolutely not worth it) and the National Museum. This turned out to be a very sad place as a large part of the museum is a zoo where animals are kept in really horrible conditions. There are lions, hyenas, hippos, monkeys and many other animals kept in tiny cages.
To make matters worse, the locals enjoyed harassing the animals by throwing things into the cages, spitting in them, or trying to disturb the animals with noise. To me, this place seemed like an animal Auschwitz. It was one of the saddest places I have ever seen during my travels.
The reason I wanted to go to the museum in the first place was to see real dinosaur bones that were found in Niger in the 1990s and are now on display in the museum. They are indeed very impressive, but it’s still not worth visiting the museum.
I had actually wanted to go to the Grand Mosque and was toying with the idea of taking a river cruise on the Niger. However, after the incident with the police I did not feel like it anymore. The reception at the hotel confirmed that I was entitled to take photos in Niamey at any time. This was obviously just a demonstration of power towards a foreigner.
Instead, I went to the Radisson, which is right next to the Noom. The restaurant there is excellent and the premises looked pretty good. If the price difference to the Noom Hotel is not too big, I recommend staying there. When I saw two policemen walking towards me on my way back, I turned around and took a different route back to the hotel. By now I was also paranoid.
I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening in my hotel and my time in Niger was coming to an end. Now I just had to get my passport back. Spending an extra day or two in Niamey would have been pure horror. So I hoped that everything would work out.
Getting the passport back
The last day didn’t start as it should. I had actually booked the hotel shuttle for 8.30 am, but I realized the evening before that reception thought this time was inappropriate for the driver on a Sunday morning. But that didn’t matter to me. I flew at 12.30 and wanted to allow enough time to get the pass back. When I checked out at 8.20, there was no driver. The receptionist told me he would be there in a few minutes. At 8.45 I started to get nervous and said that I really had to go now.
In the end, the receptionist got into a car himself and drove me to the airport. I asked him if he could come with me until I had my passport. I still had the scenario in my head that they wouldn’t give me my passport back. Fortunately, the receptionist agreed to help me.
When we arrived, he spoke to the soldier at baggage screening about the situation. The soldier first told him in a harsh tone to salute before talking to him, which he did. The soldier then said to him that everything was fine and that I should come with him.
A few minutes later I was in the office, which I already visited two days ago. The same policeman I met on my first visit was sitting there, as well as another one. Both also seemed to be senior police officers. The one who already knew me asked me why I was only spending two days in Niger and whether I was an undercover reporter (answering in the affirmative would have gotten me into real trouble).
It was a similar conversation to the one I had with the policeman the day before. Somehow the concept of tourism seemed strange to them, especially when you’re only staying for two days. Fortunately, the other of the two policemen was more relaxed and told his colleague that everything was fine before offering to find me a wife in Niger when I came back. As tempting as the offer may be, I will certainly not be returning to Niger for that reason…
Anyway, I now had my passport back and that was the most important thing. As I was now at the airport for the third time in three days, I saw the same faces among the police officers that I had seen in the previous days. They also recognized me, greeted me and talked to me as if we were long-time friends. It was a kind of bizarre situation, but it suited this trip perfectly.
My final thoughts on Niger
Well, what can I say about Niger? Niger is the first country I’ve only managed to visit on my second attempt. Add to that the little incident with the police… As you can imagine, Niger didn’t leave me with a very good impression. On the contrary, I would even list Niger in my “worst 10 countries”.
Some may say that this is not entirely fair. After all, Niger offers more than just Niamey. For example Agadez, Zinder or the desert. Niamey is probably the least interesting place in the whole country.
This is certainly true. But I can only judge the countries as I perceived them at the time of my visit. And it was not possible for tourists to leave Niamey in January 2025 anyway. A few months ago, it was still possible with a military escort, as security outside the capital could not otherwise be guaranteed. In summary, however, I can say that of all 181 countries, Niger was one of the three – together with Afghanistan and Nigeria – where I felt the most uncomfortable,
Will I come back at some point and see the other places in Niger? Never say never, but most probably not, no. It’s not as if I haven’t already seen enough desert landscapes and the Sahara in Niger still has plenty of new things to offer me. Agadez, which you can visit on a domestic flight for a whopping $650, is neither worth the time nor the cost to me, even if the city looks cool.
This leaves me with a fairly negative opinion of Niger. The most important thing was that I was still able to visit the country. As most embassies no longer issue tourist visas, it is uncertain when tourists will be able to visit the country again. I probably took advantage of one of the last chances to enter this country for an indefinite period of time.
Niger was also the last country in West Africa for me. This region, which consists of 16 countries, is often cited by travelers as the most difficult in the world to visit. Almost exactly eight years before my Niger trip, I visited Côte d’Ivoire, my first country in this region.
I’m honestly more than happy that West Africa is over now. I have some cool stories to tell from this world (click on the link below to read more stories about West Africa!). However, not only Niger is one of my “worst 10 countries”, this list contains at least 4-5 more countries from West Africa.
There are now four countries still open in Africa: Chad, Gabon and the two Congos. I will visit these in the next few months and then the continent with the most countries, 54 in total, will finally be complete.
Click here to find the trip reports of the 180+ other countries I have visited so far!
