In 2015 Niger enacted a law criminalising the illicit smuggling of migrants, applied in practice to transporting people across the desert northward, including where those transported were ECOWAS citizens moving lawfully within the bloc. It was enacted while the European Union was expanding cooperation and financial support with countries along migration routes. Niger later repealed it.

Agadez's economy, built on transport, lodging and services for travellers, contracted sharply; routes shifted to longer and more dangerous detours; and humanitarian organisations recorded increased rather than reduced risk to travellers.

Because this whole site is written for people buying mobility, and Niger shows the other side of the same market. Three conclusions: borders are not only at borders; a treaty movement right can be nullified without repealing the treaty; and the same act of going abroad to look for work is given two different names depending on how much money the traveller has.

ECOWAS citizens still had the right to reach Agadez; there was simply nobody to carry them, because carrying was a crime. Nearly the mechanism the Zimbabwe article records: not banning a right, but making its exercise impossible.

Niger is among the world's significant uranium producers and its uranium has for decades been an important input for nuclear power in several European countries. But its contribution to Niger's budget is much smaller than people assume, and mining contract terms have been domestically contested for years. Holding a strategic resource does not mean receiving proportionate revenue — what decides that is contract terms and negotiating capacity, not reserves.

No. Niger, with Mali and Burkina Faso, has given notice of withdrawal from ECOWAS and formed its own three-country alliance. This further complicates Niger's landlocked position.

Uranium, gold, livestock and oil. Niger has commissioned a pipeline to a port in Benin, though that route is affected by regional relations. More than three-quarters of the country is Sahara, and the Niger River in the south-west is where most of the population and agriculture sit.

The security situation makes this no place to plan a personal relocation. Security is heavily affected by Sahel and Lake Chad basin instability, alongside drought and desertification.