Niger's import corridors

Overview

Before 2023, between 70% and 80% of Niger's imports passed through the Port of Cotonou in Benin, and Nigerien cargo made up around 80% of that port's transit volume — a dependence running in both directions. The closure of the Malanville–Gaya bridge in July 2023, followed by Benin's suspension of transit to Niger from August to December that year, collapsed the route. Traffic redirected to Lomé, Abidjan, Dakar and Nouakchott: the Port of Lomé handled 2.06 million TEU in 2024 with 92% of its transit traffic bound for AES states, and set an African monthly record of 123,000 container moves in March 2025. Niger is reported to have lost 117 billion CFA francs in public revenue to the closure. On 9 February President Tinubu reopened the Tsamiya–Kamba corridor linking Ségbana in Benin to Sabon Birni in Niger through Kebbi State in north-western Nigeria. The Niger–Benin oil pipeline to the Sème-Kpodji terminal has continued to operate intermittently throughout, because neither side has gained by dismantling it; incidents at the terminal in 2024 included the detention of Nigerien technicians.

Why it matters

Niger is the case that separates corridor risk from insurgent risk. Mali's corridors are interdicted by an armed group; Burkina Faso's are threatened by one; Niger's principal route was closed by a bilateral political dispute and has stayed shut for three years. The consequences look similar — higher costs, longer routes, lost revenue — and the remedies are entirely different. It also demonstrates how little the ECOWAS rupture actually severed: the pipeline kept running, a Nigerian transit corridor was reopened for Niger-bound trade, and the volume simply moved to other ECOWAS ports. Political rupture and physical dependence are on different tracks.

What depends on it

Total for maritime access and, until 2023, heavily concentrated. Niger has no coastline and no domestic refining at the scale of its consumption; the Cotonou route was the overwhelming majority of its import traffic. The redirection to Lomé and the Atlantic ports proved that alternatives exist, at materially higher cost and over longer distances — the practical measure of which is the reported 117 billion CFA francs in lost public revenue. The reopened Kebbi transit route through Nigeria is a partial alternative whose carried volume is not established.

What disruption does

Higher landed costs on everything imported, longer transit times, and a reported 117 billion CFA francs in lost public revenue. The counterpart exposure sits in Benin, where Nigerien cargo was around 80% of the Port of Cotonou's transit volume — a port that lost most of its transit business to a political decision. The pipeline's continued intermittent operation through the whole dispute is the clearest evidence that neither government wants the economic relationship ended, only leveraged.

Alternatives and redundancy

Demonstrated and expensive. Volume redirected to Lomé, Abidjan, Dakar and Nouakchott after 2023, which establishes that the country is not dependent on any single port — but every alternative is longer, costlier, and still runs through an ECOWAS coastal state. The Kebbi transit corridor through north-western Nigeria, reopened in February, is the one route that bypasses the Benin dispute directly; its volume is unknown. Wider AES adaptation includes the Conakry–Bamako and Nouakchott–Bamako routes, the latter improved by the Rosso Bridge scheduled for 2026, and modest air freight such as a weekly Niger Air Cargo service between Belgium and Niamey — all of which serve Mali more than Niger.

Political implications

The corridor is a bilateral bargaining instrument, which makes its status a diplomatic indicator rather than a security one.

Military implications

Sustainment for a force fighting in the west runs on lengthened supply lines from ports further away than the one it used to use.

Economic implications

Cost inflation on all imports, lost customs revenue, and a mirrored loss on the Beninese side.

Humanitarian implications

Relief supply uses the same lengthened routes into a country whose western regions carry the region's highest recorded civilian death toll.

Actors with a stake

What remains unknown

• THE EASTERN ROUTE INTO MALI IS STILL NOT REPRESENTED. Reporting indicates JNIM's blockade extended to an eastern supply route from Niger into Mali — a corridor in which Niger is the transit country rather than the destination. No port, route, volume or node detail has been established, so no record is authored. This is a content gap, not a schema limitation: the architecture to hold it exists and is deliberately empty.
• The volume carried by the reopened Kebbi transit corridor is not published.
• Current throughput on the Cotonou axis, as against its pre-2023 level, is not established; the collapse is documented, the residual is not.
• The 117 billion CFA franc revenue figure rests on a single source and is recorded as reported rather than established.

Readings the evidence also supports

• The redirection of traffic to Lomé can be read as a durable restructuring of Sahelian transit or as a temporary accommodation that would reverse on a Benin–Niger settlement. Port statistics support the first; the pipeline's continued operation and the reopened Kebbi route support the second.

Listed because the record's own assessment is not the only one its sources permit — not as a hedge on the assessment above.