Some form of human settlement has been in Niger for almost as long as there have been humans at all. The earliest ones, living millions of years ago, would have seen not a desert but a climate teeming with life. Ancient Nigerian settlers also were possibly the first to domesticate the camel. Like most of West Africa, the land became a territorial possession of France in the early 1900s up until France decided to begin divesting itself of its colonies after the second world war.

On this day, August 3, in 1960, in a carefully measured and widely expected move, the Nigerian government declared independence from France. This was a bloodless coup: the French had already granted limited freedom to govern its own affairs, and encouraged it to adopt formal self-rule.

The government system of Niger was only nominally democratic. Its first elected president, Hi Diori, was re-elected unopposed in 1965 despite a narrow escape from an assassination attempt, and a foiled coup two years earlier. He won again, unopposed, in 1970. Diori was finally overthrown and imprisoned by a military junta that ruled with an iron first until 1990. A semblance of democracy only appeared by the year 2000.