Mangan, Fiona and Matthias Nowak. 2019 ‘Key Arms-Trafficking Routes and Flow Patterns - Niger.’ The West Africa–Sahel Connection: Mapping Cross-Border Arms Trafficking, pp. 5-6. Geneva: Small Arms Survey, the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva. 1 December

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Based on fieldwork findings, it appears that Niger serves primarily as a transit country for arms traffickers. Weapons and other illicit flows enter northern Niger through Libya's south-western border in and around an area known as the Salvador Pass and move through age-old trans-Sahelian trade routes, with some routes now moving into southern Algeria to avoid US and French surveillance of the area in recent years. These flows respond to significant demand for weapons in Mali, but also move southward to Burkina Faso, Nigeria, and other states in West and sub-Saharan Africa.

Pre-dating recent arms flows from Libya, a key historical route in Niger extends from the Lake Chad region through Niger to Mali. This route remains active, but was more prominent in the 1990s and the early part of the first decade of the 21st century. Another route involves localized flows in the Tillabéri and Tahoua regions of southern and western Niger. Niger also hosts a limited domestic market, and there is evidence of increasing local demand from gold miners, traffickers and smugglers, rural communities, and tribes. Traffickers and smugglers increasingly carry arms, and members of rural communities and tribes have begun to arm themselves in response to highway banditry, illegal checkpoints, and inter-community violence; this latter type of violence is itself fuelled by the increased circulation of arms in the region.

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