Niger River

The Niger River (/ˈnaɪdʒər/ NY-jər; French: (le) fleuve Niger, pronounced: [(lə) flœv niʒɛʁ]) is the principal river of western Africa, extending about 4,180 km (2,600 mi). Its drainage basin is 2,117,700 km² (817,600 sq mi) in area. Its source is in the Guinea Highlands in southeastern Guinea. It runs in a crescent through Mali, Niger, on the border with Benin and then through Nigeria, discharging through a massive delta, known as the Niger Delta or the Oil Rivers, into the Gulf of Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean. The Niger is the third-longest river in Africa, exceeded only by the Nile and the Congo River (also known as the Zaïre River). Its main tributary is the Benue River.

The Scottish explorer Mungo Park was the first Westerner known to have travelled to the central portion of the Niger River.

Etymology

The Niger is called Jeliba or Joliba "great river" in Manding; Orimiri or Orimili "great water" in Igbo; Egerew n-Igerewen "river of rivers" in Tuareg; Isa Ber "big river" in Songhay; Kwara in Hausa; and Oya in Yoruba. The earliest use of the name "Niger" for the river is by Leo Africanus in his Della descrittione dell’Africa et delle cose notabili che iui sono published in Italian in 1550. The name may come from Berber phrase ger-n-ger meaning "river of rivers". As Timbuktu was the southern end of the principal Trans-Saharan trade route to the western Mediterranean, it was the source of most European knowledge of the region.

Niger Delta

The Niger Delta is the delta of the Niger River at the Gulf of Guinea on the Atlantic Ocean in Nigeria.

It is a very densely populated region sometimes called the Oil Rivers because it was once a major producer of palm oil. The area was the British Oil Rivers Protectorate from 1885 until 1893, when it was expanded and became the Niger Coast Protectorate. The delta is an oil-rich region, and has been the centre of international controversy over pollution, corruption (notably by the Abacha regime), and human rights violations.

Geography

The Niger Delta, as now defined officially by the Nigerian government, extends over about 70,000 km² (27,000 sq mi) and makes up 7.5% of Nigeria's land mass. Historically and cartographically, it consists of present-day Bayelsa, Delta, and Rivers States. In 2000, however, Obasanjo's regime included Abia, Akwa-Ibom, Cross River State, Edo, Imo and Ondo States in the region. Some 31 million people of more than 40 ethnic groups including the Bini, Efik, Esan, Ibibio, Igbo, Annang, Oron, Ijaw, Itsekiri, Yoruba, Isoko, Urhobo, Ukwuani, Kalabari and Ogoni, are among the inhabitants in the Niger Delta, speaking about 250 different dialects.

River delta

A river delta is a landform that forms from deposition of sediment carried by a river as the flow leaves its mouth and enters slower-moving or standing water. This occurs where a river enters an ocean, sea, estuary, lake, reservoir, or (more rarely) another river that cannot transport away the supplied sediment.

Despite a popular legend, this use of the word delta was not coined by Herodotus.

Formation

River deltas form when a river carrying sediment reaches either (1) a body of standing water, such as a lake, ocean, or reservoir, (2) another river that cannot remove the sediment quickly enough to stop delta formation, or (3) an inland region where the water spreads out and deposits sediments. The tidal currents also cannot be too strong, as sediment would wash out into the water body faster than the river deposits it. Of course, the river must carry enough sediment to layer into deltas over time. The river's velocity decreases rapidly, causing it to deposit the majority, if not all, of its load. This alluvium builds up to form the river delta. When the flow enters the standing water, it is no longer confined to its channel and expands in width. This flow expansion results in a decrease in the flow velocity, which diminishes the ability of the flow to transport sediment. As a result, sediment drops out of the flow and deposits. Over time, this single channel builds a deltaic lobe (such as the bird's-foot of the Mississippi or Ural river deltas), pushing its mouth into the standing water. As the deltaic lobe advances, the gradient of the river channel becomes lower because the river channel is longer but has the same change in elevation (see slope).

Niger

Coordinates: 16°N 8°E / 16°N 8°E / 16; 8

Niger (ⁱ/ˈnaɪdʒər/ or /niːˈʒɛər/;French: [niʒɛʁ]), officially the Republic of Niger, is a landlocked country in Western Africa, named after the Niger River. Niger is bordered by Libya to the northeast, Chad to the east, Nigeria and Benin to the south, Burkina Faso and Mali to the west, and Algeria to the northwest. Niger covers a land area of almost 1,270,000 km², making it the largest country in West Africa, with over 80 percent of its land area covered by the Sahara Desert. The country's predominantly Islamic population of 17,138,707 is mostly clustered in the far south and west of the country. The capital city is Niamey, located in the far-southwest corner of Niger.

Niger is a developing country, and is consistently one of the lowest-ranked in the United Nations' Human Development Index (HDI); it was ranked last at 187th for 2013. Much of the non-desert portions of the country are threatened by periodic drought and desertification. The economy is concentrated around subsistence and some export agriculture clustered in the more fertile south, and the export of raw materials, especially uranium ore. Niger faces serious challenges to development due to its landlocked position, desert terrain, high fertility rates and resulting overpopulation without birth control, poor education and poverty of its people, lack of infrastructure, poor health care, and environmental degradation.

Simeon Niger

Simeon Niger is a person in the Book of Acts in the New Testament. He is mentioned in Acts 13:1 as being one of the "prophets and teachers" in the church of Antioch:

The nickname Niger means "black", and refers to a dark complexion and/or African descent.

References

Niger (African Region)

Niger, is term taken from the Niger River, which also refers to one of Africa's five political, Sports, and Geographical regions. Other administrative divisions include the Sahara, Congo, Nile, and the Kalahari regions.

References