Niger – Jayson Casper

‘We Are Not in Heaven’: Niger Analyst Explains Christians’ Concern After Coup

Image: Anadolu Agency / Contributor / Getty

The military coup in Niger has now entered its third week. Four days after the July 26 putsch, the 15-member Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) threatened military action if democratic rule was not restored within seven days.

That deadline has passed, and leaders are still mulling their options while imposing sanctions against the junta, the group of military officials that seized power. But worried by the seventh coup in the Sahel region since 2020, the remaining democratic nations in West Africa believe they must draw a line in the sand.

Neighboring countries Mali and Burkina Faso, both with military governments after their own recent coups, have warned that any foreign intervention in Niger will be considered an act of war against them as well.

Niger suffered its last coup attempt in 2021, right before the elected president—now deposed—was sworn in. The former French colony had been the last bastion of Western military cooperation against jihadist militants in the Sahel, amid the expanded regional influence of Russia through its Wagner mercenary unit.

Niger, meanwhile, is the world’s seventh-largest producer of uranium.

CT interviewed Illia Djadi, Open Doors’ senior analyst for freedom of religion and belief in sub-Saharan Africa. Though he resides in London, he is a citizen of Niger, a nation which ranks No. 28 on the World Watch List of the top 50 nations where it is most difficult to be a Christian.

Djadi provided the regional context, described the difficult but improving situation of Christians, and issued a strong appeal against military intervention:

How serious is the situation in Niger right now?

I am very sad. As a Nigerien, I find the situation difficult to watch.

But as an analyst, I can say confidently that what happened two weeks ago plunged Niger into a new era of uncertainty. The country is facing a terrorist Islamist insurgency coming from Nigeria, Mali, and Burkina Faso. And Niger is also one of the poorest nations in the world, with unemployment making it easy to radicalize our youth.

We are not in heaven. But compared to our neighbors, we had been in a much better situation. For the first time…

This article was first published at Christianity Today, on August 11, 2023. Please click here to read the full text.

The Forest Underground: How an Australian Missionary Regrew the African Sahel

After 18 grueling months fighting desertification in Niger, Tony Rinaudo was near despair. As manager of a small reforestation project for SIM in 1983, he knew few of the 6,000 trees the missions agency had planted yearly since 1977 had survived the arid Sahel climate.

Locals called him the “crazy white farmer,” not wishing to waste valuable agricultural land on more failed efforts. But, trudging on, he loaded another batch of saplings into his pickup truck, struggling to fulfill his childhood prayer.

Years earlier in the threatened Ovens Valley of southeast Australia, Rinaudo lamented the bulldozing of hilly bushland and the killing of fish by drift from insecticides sprayed on tobacco plants—while children elsewhere went to bed hungry.

“God,” he cried out, “use me somehow, somewhere, to make a difference.”

Soon thereafter he stumbled upon I Planted Trees by Richard St. Barbe Baker. One line impressed itself upon Rinaudo, becoming his eventual life work.

“When the forests go, the waters go, the fish and game go, herds and flocks go, fertility departs,” he read from the 19th-century English botanist’s book. (The quote is attributed elsewhere to Scottish science journalist Robert Chambers). “Then the age-old phantoms appear stealthily, one after another—Flood, Drought, Fire, Famine, Pestilence.”

In 1981, Rinaudo settled in Maradi, 400 miles east of Niger’s capital, Niamey. The West African nation’s economic center, on its southern border with Nigeria, hosted SIM’s agricultural project, a hospital, and a local Bible school. Present since 1924, the mission—together with Catholics—established Niger’s largest concentration of Christians, though they numbered less than 1 percent of the population overall.

French colonialists and later international development projects contributed to environmental degradation through large-scale farming, clearing trees to maximize yield. Local farmers felled them further—out of poverty and hunger—to sell the wood, while women would walk miles to find kindling for their cooking fires.

As Rinaudo stopped to deflate his tires to traverse the sandy landscape for his delivery, he sighed and once again called out to God.

“Forgive us for destroying the gift of creation,” he prayed. “Show us what to do, open our eyes.”

Looking up, he spied a bush. On any other desert trek, Rinaudo recounted to CT, he would have passed by similar-looking shrubs soon to be consumed by wandering goats. But this time…

This article was originally published by Christianity Today, on November 10, 2022. Please click here to read the full text.

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