Pathways to sustainable growth in Niger: a World Bank Group country economic memorandum
This country economic memorandum aims to support Niger’s efforts to walk on a path conducive to resilient and sustainable economic growth. It does so by attempting to answer the following five questions, each of which constitutes a separate chapter: (i) what were the salient structural characteristics of Niger’s growth performance in the last 20 years; (ii) what are the margins to accelerate growth in the medium to long term; (iii) how can technology be a vehicle for private sector development; (iv) how can the country’s large natural resource endowments be managed in a transparent way that benefits the whole population; and (v) how can the current disaster management framework be strengthened to increase resilience to natural shocks.
As a landlocked country with a mostly semi-arid climate, Niger faces multiple climate threats, most prominently recurrent droughts. Flooding is mainly a threat in the River Niger basin, affecting on average well over 100,000 people a year. The poor suffer disproportionally from adverse natural events, which are considered the main driver of poverty. It is also important to note that in the past three to four decades, summer rainfall has increased in Niger, leading to a return to yearly rainfall close to the levels of the 1960's, while temperature has risen at about 0.15°C per decade, with a higher number of warm days, and lower numbers of cold days and nights, overall amplifying the impacts of meteorological droughts. This yearly precipitation recovery has manifested in the form of extended tails of short-term rainfall distributions which have happened throughout the Sahel, and is generally associated with floods.