Demographic features of Nigeriens, the people of Niger, include population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population.
The largest ethnic groups in Niger are the Hausa, who also constitute the major ethnic group in northern Nigeria, and the Zarma-Songhai (also spelled Djerma-Songhai), who also are found in parts of Mali. Both groups are sedentary farmers who live in the arable, southern tier. The Kanouri (including Beri Beri, Manga) make up the majority of sedentary population in the far southeast of the nation. The remainder of the Nigerien people are nomadic or seminomadic livestock-raising peoples—Tuareg, Fulani,[1] Toubou and Diffa Arabs. With rapidly growing populations and the consequent competition for meager natural resources, lifestyles of these two types of peoples have come increasingly into conflict in Niger in recent years. Some white French people live in the country due to Niger being a former colony of France.
Niger's high infant mortality rate is comparable to levels recorded in neighboring countries. However, the child mortality rate (deaths among children between the ages of 1 and 4) is exceptionally high (274 per 1,000) due to generally poor health conditions and inadequate nutrition for most of the country's children. Niger's very high total fertility rate (6.89 children born per woman, which is the highest in the world[2]), nonetheless, means that nearly half (49%) of the Nigerien population is under age 15. School attendance is low (34%), including 38% of males and 27% of females. Additional education occurs through Koranic schools.
According to the 2022 revision of the World Population Prospects[4][5] the total population was 25,252,722 in 2021, compared to only 2 462 000 in 1950. The proportion of children and teenagers below the age of 15 in 2010 was 49%, 48.8% was between 15 and 65 years of age, while only 2.2% was 65 years or older.[6]
Registration of vital events in Niger is incomplete. The website Our World in Data prepared the following estimates based on statistics from the Population Department of the United Nations.[8]
On 21 March 2022, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a Travel Alert for polio in Africa; Niger is currently considered a high risk to travelers for circulating vaccine-derived polioviruses (cVDPV). Vaccine-derived poliovirus (VDPV) is a strain of the weakened poliovirus that was initially included in oral polio vaccine (OPV) and that has changed over time and behaves more like the wild or naturally occurring virus; this means it can be spread more easily to people who are unvaccinated against polio and who come in contact with the stool or respiratory secretions, such as from a sneeze, of an “infected” person who received an oral polio vaccine. The CDC recommends that before any international travel, anyone unvaccinated, incompletely vaccinated, or with an unknown polio vaccination status should complete the routine polio vaccine series. Before travel to any high-risk destination, CDC recommends that adults who previously completed the full, routine polio vaccine series receive a single, lifetime booster dose of polio vaccine