Most international attention on Niger focuses on the Boko Haram conflict in the country’s east (Diffa region) and the Liptako-Gourma crisis in its west (Tillabéri and Tahoua regions). But the Maradi region, along Niger’s south-central border with Nigeria, is becoming another hotspot that could strain national efforts to curb insecurity.
Since 2017, Maradi has been affected by the expansion of organised and violent banditry from neighbouring North-west Nigeria, where cattle rustling and kidnappings for ransom are rampant. Armed criminals operating from Sokoto, Zamfara and Katsina states in Nigeria cross the border at night on motorcycles to attack locals before retreating to wooded areas and the Baban Rafi Forest straddling the two countries.
In 2021 a local newspaper, Le Souffle de Maradi, recorded 2,735 stolen animals, 91 victims of abductions, and payment of some 51 million CFA francs (over €77,500) in ransom by hostages’ families. And…
