This is an article from the latest issue of Linkiesta Magazine + New York Times Turning Points 2022 on newsstands in Milan and Rome and can be ordered here.
In Arlit, the Niger city where I grew up, many of the adults around me worked in the mines. It was the nineties and it was long before I started dreaming of writing music and playing the guitar. I remember seeing the miners get sick, who worked for whole days underground only to return home at night. Due to the radiation in the uranium mines, many developed serious health problems: respiratory diseases, lung diseases and paralysis.
I remember that women also had symptoms and that premature births occurred. Cancer was widespread. And not only among men and women, but also among children. Niger is a poor country, but it is rich in natural resources. When France, in 2001, closed the uranium mines on its territory, those in Niger, which have been in operation since the late 1960s, compensated for the lack of production.
Today the excavations are carried out by various companies, many of which have the French government as the majority shareholder. And one of the few ways Nigerians can get paid work is to work for these mining companies. Understanding the importance of mines and what this implies for Niger means understanding how colonialism works in practice.
In formal terms, France is no longer present in my country (we gained independence in 1960), but its influence is still deeply felt. In Niger we speak French, we spend French money, we work for French companies and we work in the mines to supply France with the precious raw materials found in our country. In some ways, we are only nominally a nation. Daily life in Niger is not much different than it was when I was a child. Indeed, it is even comparable with that of the period in which France began its mining activity in these parts, in the late 1960s.
We existed then to guarantee exports to France – cheap labor, material goods, natural resources – and even today our function is the same. The most valuable resources we have, our uranium deposits, belong to France, although this is now under a contract, and the mined ore is shipped there. If we had built these mines ourselves, we might have been able to keep some of the money. But, according to the United Nations Human Development Index – which analyzes a population’s health, education level and average income to measure a country’s quality of life – Niger ranks last in a list of 189 countries and territories.
One might think that, thanks to our abundant natural resources, we have a functioning or perhaps even an advanced power grid. Instead, while our uranium powers some of the nuclear electricity that France can rely on, we must import a large part of our electricity from Nigeria, that is, from another former colony. It is as if we only existed as a rebound. As a boy I learned to play the guitar on a tool made of wood and wire for bicycle brakes. And when I finally got a real guitar, I had to use it with a battery powered amp.
And, in fact, I still use battery powered amplifiers. After doing a handful of albums and twelve over the course of my career tour, when I have to play I still have to deal with the Nigerian electricity grid. So, unlike most American and European musicians, me and mine band we cannot attach our tools to sockets in the wall. And as far as reaching the concert venues is concerned, the mining trails that have been built between the towns and cities that have sprung up around the French-owned mining facilities are of little use.
When me and mine band we visit the United States, it takes less than five hours to travel the approximately 320 kilometers between New York and Boston. On the other hand, even if the kilometers that separate Arlit and Agadez, a city in my province, are eighty less, the journey to cover them takes about ten hours more. Arlit and Niamey, the capital of Niger, are 1,200 kilometers apart, but traveling from one to the other requires at least one overnight stop and sometimes two. This is not the crudest reminder of the French colonial legacy, but it is an aspect that is immediately perceived. Colonialism is a topic that I explore a lot in my music. My new record, “Afrique Victime” is the most political of the ones I’ve recorded so far. But Niger’s problems are more than I can fit on a record.
The military presence of the France – with its tanks, its drones and its weapons – will throw our entire region away. And Boko Haram, the terrorist organization born in Nigeria, has crept across the border with Niger and spread more and more. This summer alone, sixteen Nigerian soldiers were killed by Boko Haram militants. But in the meantime the French armaments remain idle there. People often ask me how Niger could be helped and if colonialism can be overcome. I am not optimistic. Even though the French flag no longer flies in Niger, the horrifying truth is that my country remains a colonial asset to France because of her mines.
There is no clear road that can lead us out of our extreme misery and every day the presence and influence of France are intertwined more and more inextricably with the very existence of our nation. Colonialism still exists in Niger because it was allowed to exist. But overcoming colonialism is not a problem that we Nigeriens can take on. It’s not (and shouldn’t be) something we can go through on our own. I do what I can with my music, but I can only amplify my personal message, a message I communicate through a guitar powered by a battery that doesn’t always work.
The situation in Niger will not change until France, which still has enormous power here, recognizes the toxic role it has played in shaping my country in this way and the harmful consequences of its prolonged presence. France needs our energy to function, but then we have no energy for us. It is time for things to change.
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