Bankilaré, Téra: 2005

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Husseina (left) and Hussaina (in her aunt’s lap), both 40 days old, Bankilaré, Niger, 2005.

When Husseina and Hussaina’s mother, Aisha, went into labour, the family had to take out a loan to pay for the ambulance to take her to the nearest hospital, 72km away. It was only after the 14-year-old had given birth to her first baby that doctors realised she was carrying twins. (The nearest ultrasound scanner was 200km away, in the capital, Niamey.) Aisha had a caesarean section but died as they delivered the second baby.

The twins’ aunt, Fatima, took care of them as their father was looking for work abroad. She worried for the babies’ survival. Already in debt due to the drought and the ambulance fees, she did not have the money to pay for their vaccinations or to buy enough milk powder. “Even my goat doesn’t produce enough milk,” she said. “All that is left for me is to ask God to feed and clothe them.”

Six months after I visited, Husseina and Hussaina died, within three days of each other.

Komabangou, Téra: 2005

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Young miners in Komabangou, 2005. Workers come from across Niger as well as neighbouring countries to work here.

Komabangou can only be reached after a long journey across a desert track. Of a population of 20,000, miners number 6,000, who come from villages across Niger as well as neighbouring countries – Benin, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Togo, Ghana – to work here. They are mining for gold and most are unaware of its subsequent use or value. Some men strike it lucky after a few days but others work for as long as three months and earn nothing. In Komabangou, daytime temperatures can soar to 45C.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest 15-year-old Abbas, working in the mine at Komabangou, 2005. Photograph: Nick Danziger/NB Pictures

Abbas has worked in the mines for three years. He works from 6am until 7pm, seven days a week. Sometimes he goes back in the evening to do a further two to four hours’ work. He has never been to school and cannot read or write. Although his village is 12km from the mine, he hasn’t been home since he arrived here and has only seen his father once. About a year ago, his boss fell down the 22-metre mine shaft and died.

“After that happened I was afraid to go down the [mine shaft] but I had to earn money so I had no choice,” Abbas said. He is meant to send money home, but has never earned enough to do so. “Misery brought me here,” says Abbas. He knows that the gold he is trying to mine is precious but he has never seen a product made of gold.

Komabangou: 2010

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Young miners in Komabangou, 2010.

There are no safety measures in the mine, no ropes or guidelines down to the subterranean galleries where there are no lights, joists or beams. The work is extremely tough. A narcotic cocktail, sold by the mine ‘pharmacist’ and swallowed every six hours, keeps up the miners’ courage and numbs physical pain.

Abbas, in all his hellish years underground, failed to unearth a single flake of precious metal. Instead he started to work on the surface, pounding the rock to a powder, then washing and filtering the slag through a carpet to collect gold dust. By 2010 he was earning enough money to buy bread and soap for his mother and his 13-year-old wife, Aisha. “My hope is to have a baby son,” he said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Abbas in 2010, aged 20, with his mother and 13-year-old wife, Aisha .

Abbas will not allow Aisha to go to school “because I want a girl who is not wise and does not know the ways of the world, so I can control her, and so that she will not be influenced by all the bad and debauchery in the world”.



Komabangou: 2015

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Miners on the scorched hill of Bourka Bourka, near Komabangou, 2015.

In 2014 Bourka Bourka – in one of the hottest and driest areas of the world – had been deserted. Then a prospector found on it a single flake of gold. Within days, a thousand desperate men abandoned the overworked gold field in nearby Komabangou, and transformed the scorched hill into a satanic labour camp.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Miners at Bourka Bourka.

“I don’t know what the future will bring,” said one miner. “All I wish for is enough food to feed my family. But neither working the land nor the mines produces anything but tiredness.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Working on Bourka Bourka gold field.

The miners do not have a license, but the government lets them work the gold fields despite this, as jobs are hard to come by. Niger is one of the world’s poorest countries, with 44% of the population living on less than $1.25 a day.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bourka Bourka gold field.

In 2015, Abbas was once again descending the mineshafts in search of gold. He was desperate for a son, but Aisha had failed to become pregnant, so he had taken a second wife, Latifa, 13 years old at the time of their marriage.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Abbas and his wife Aisha, 2015.

Niger has the highest rate of child marriage in the world. Legally, girls must be 15 to be married, but poverty often drives families – such as those of Aisha and Latifa – to marry girls off at a younger age.

Hamlets north of Tibiri, Maradi: 2005

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Fula families, southern Niger, 2005.

In earlier years semi-nomadic Fula families owned as many as a hundred livestock: cows, goats, camels and donkeys. In 2005, armed bandits stole this family’s camels and drought claimed all but three of their cows and goats. The harvest failed, leaving them with no money to buy grain from the market or to purchase seed for the next season. Almost all the region’s young men – with the exception of village blacksmiths – had left Niger to find work abroad. Those who had stayed behind had almost nothing to eat.

North of Tibiri: 2010

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Aissha, seven, a Fula shepherdess, north of Tibiri, Maradi, 2010.

Hunger, disease and poverty remained endemic north of Tibiri. In 2010 there was still no infrastructure in the commune: no roads, no electricity, no telephone, no school, no clinic, no health worker, no irrigation system, no fertiliser, no seeds. There were also insufficient anti-malaria drugs, and those that were available tended to be beyond their expiry date or ineffective against the local parasite. Malaria killed 1.2 million people in 2010, 90% of those deaths in sub-Saharan Africa.

North of Tibiri: 2015

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Aissha in 2015, aged 12.

Aissha will be married next year. Her father sold her for 20,000 CFA ($35). Both her elder sisters are already married and have babies. Because of the lack of food, one of them can no longer breastfeed her child, so Aissha’s other sister feeds both infants. Some women scratch dry riverbeds in search of tubers, their sole nourishment until the start of the rains. Aissha has never been to school.

In 2005, many schools began to open in villages across Niger for the first time, yet only a fraction of local school-age children attended. Many of the boys – and the majority of the girls – were kept at home and at work because of both tradition and poverty. If children didn’t earn money, there would not be enough to feed the family. The country has one of the lowest literary rates in the world, and the primary school net enrolment rate for girls was 57% for the years 2008-12.