Stirrings in Niger.(Country overview)

News of some remarkable developments has been coming out of Niger in recent weeks. On March 13, 2007, the Senegal based African news service Panapress (Dakar) distributed a story on its wires with the following headline: "Decreased Cost of Living Announced in Niger."

While the headline itself was eye catching, the detail provided by Panapress was even more striking. "The cost of basic utilities in Niger, including water, fuel, health care and education will go down by between 15 and 60 percent starting 15 March [2007]."

Panapress cited Niger's national consumer organization, the Coalition for Equity-Quality Against High Cost of Living for the information.

Depending on whose statistics are trustworthy at the moment-and "trustworthy" and the phrase "international economic statistics" are not often used in the same sentence-Niger is either the world's poorest country, or the second poorest.

A March 12, 2007 Reuters dispatch characterized Niger this way: "Niger, a landlocked country stretching from Nigeria's northern border deep into the Sahara, rated [at the] bottom of the most recent U.N. Human Development Index of 177 nations ranked by quality of life."

So the huge cost of living reduction takes on much more notice against the background of Niger's extraordinary privation-particularly since the reduction involves such basic services, which impact on prices and availability for nearly everything.

And there is more.

Since 2000, according to a January 5, 2007 press release from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Niger has been getting government out of private enterprise with the aim of making the newly privatized organizations more efficient.

But the March 12, 2007 Reuters story cited above says Niger is drawing the line at privatizing the country's electric company and Niger's oil distributor.

And not only that but the World Bank agrees! With the IMF, the World Bank has taken the lead in schooling Niger on its very long road to market economy status.

One of the central reasons that this step back from privatization is not alarming is that neither the electric company nor the oil distributor actually produce anything. "Niger does not produce oil, and NIGELEC imports 95 percent of its power consumption from neighboring Nigeria, Africa's top oil producer," says Reuters.

So, is Niger about to become at least an emergent economy? By no means. Numerous reforms still need to be enacted, and infrastructure, especially in agricultural irrigation, is a major problem according to the IMF. Environmental shocks, such as the devastating 2004-2005 drought, are a danger. But make no mistake: Niger has taken a genuinely impressive step forward here.

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