Part of French territory of Haut-Sénégal from September 6, 1880 to January 1, 1911. Known as the French colony of "Niger" by December 26, 1922. Independent from France on August 3, 1960.
Consistently ranked as the least prosperous country on Earth on all major indexes - the absolute bottom in the UN Human Development Index year after year, for example (No. 189 out of 189 countries in 2018). Though a country rich in resources, such as uranium ore, Niger's 21 million people suffer under non-stop governmental mismanagement, instability and extremely high corruption (invariably ranked among the top 5).
