Mahamadou Issoufou
Mahamadou Issoufou handed power to an elected successor, which had never happened in Niger before and has not happened since. He was a mining engineer who ran the state uranium company at Arlit, founded a social-democratic party in 1990, and lost three presidential elections before winning the fourth in 2011. That election followed a coup: the previous president had tried to extend his own term and the army removed him and then, unusually, organised a vote and went home. Niger is the hardest country in the world to govern by most measures - consistently last or near last on the human development index, four-fifths desert, and with the highest fertility rate on earth, so the population doubles roughly every twenty years and every gain in schooling or food production is divided among more people. Its one great export is uranium, mined in the north by a French state company since the 1970s on terms Nigerien governments have periodically and unsuccessfully tried to renegotiate; the reactors of France ran on it while Niger's own electrification stayed among the lowest anywhere. His decade was dominated by security. Boko Haram crossed from Nigeria in the south-east, jihadist groups pushed in from Mali in the west, Libya's collapse opened the north to weapons and to the migration route across the Sahara, and Niger became the base for French and American counter-terrorism operations across the whole Sahel. The cost fell on the border districts. Tillaberi and Diffa emptied into displacement camps, whole villages were killed in single attacks, and the state of emergency in those regions was renewed continuously for years. Niger also became the place Europe paid to stop migration: a law of 2015 criminalised carrying people north through Agadez, which destroyed the legal economy of a transit city and pushed the routes into the desert rather than ending them. He declined a third term in 2021 despite having the votes to change the constitution, and was given the Mo Ibrahim prize for it. Two years later the army overthrew the man he had handed to, expelled the French and American forces, and Niger joined its neighbours in leaving the regional bloc.
- Lived: 1952 CE – ?
- Nationality: Nigerien
- Roles: head_of_state, politician
