French uranium miner Orano said on Friday it had evacuated expatriate staff from northern Niger after being warned of a threat in the jihadist-troubled region. The company late Thursday was advised of a “security event” in a village located halfway between the Malian border and the mining town of Arlit, it said in a statement. “Measures were immediately set in place to protect (Orano) sites,” it said.
Orano’s expatriate personnel and other foreign workers on temporary assignment living in a compound at Akokan near Arlit “were evacuated under escort and flown to Niamey,” Niger’s capital, it said. “The return of all the evacuated staff should take place in the next few days as soon as there is confirmation that any risk can be ruled out,” Orano said.
A company source told AFP that 16 people had been evacuated, comprising 12 westerners and four nations from West Africa. According to Air Info, an Agadez-based media outlet that covers northern Niger, dozens of armed men travelling on motorbike were seen near the village of Inanbagaret on Thursday. “They asked several herders they came across… (whether there were) western citizens in Arlit,” it said. Orano is the successor to France’s state-run Areva, which has had uranium mining interests in Niger for decades.
In 2010, seven Areva employees — five French nationals, a Togolese and a Madagascan — were kidnapped at Arlit by armed men. One of the French captives, Francoise Larribe, was released five months later along with the Madagascan and Togolese. The four other hostages were only released in October 2013, shortly after their detention was claimed by Al-Qaeda’s North African branch, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).
Jihadist crisis
A landlocked and deeply impoverished state lying in the heart of the turbulent Sahel, Niger is struggling with two jihadist campaigns. One is an insurgency that swept into the west of the country from Mali in 2015, while the other is a spillover by Boko Haram militants in Nigeria that affects its southeast. Western countries led by France and the United States, which have military bases in Niger, are providing support. France has around 2,000 men in Niger under an anti-jihadist strategy that was revised after it pulled out from Mali and Burkina Faso following a spat with those countries’ ruling juntas.
Last week, the Nigerien government and Orano signed a deal to extend the working life of the country’s sole uranium mine, the so-called Somair site near Arlit. The deal means Somair may carry on working until 2040, 11 years beyond its currently expected closure. It includes a pledge by Orano to inject 26 billion CFA francs ($44 million) into education and other “priority” sectors. However, the two sides agreed to postpone the start of mining at the northern site of Imouraren, which has estimated deposits of 200,000 tonnes of uranium — among the biggest in the world.
Operations should have started there in 2015 but were put on hold after the world price for uranium collapsed following the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan. Another Orano mine in Niger, Cominak, closed in 2021.
