Goure is a town in southeastern Niger

Niger

Niger , officially named the Republic of Niger, is a landlocked country in Western Africa, named after the Niger River. It borders Nigeria and Benin to the south, Burkina Faso and Mali to the west, Algeria and Libya to the north and Chad to the east...

, Zinder Region, Goure Department

Goure Department

Goure is a department of the Zinder Region in Niger. Its capital lies at the city of Goure....

, of which it is the seat.

Situation

Situated on the main all weather east - west highway in Southern Niger, it is about 170 km east of regional capital, Zinder

Zinder

Zinder is the second largest city in Niger, with a population of 170,574 by 2005 was estimated to be over 200,000...

, on the route east to Diffa

Diffa

Diffa is a city and Urban Commune in the extreme southeast of Niger, near that country's border with Nigeria, with a population of 23,600 . It is the administrative seat of both Diffa Region, and the smaller Diffa Department...

, N'Guigmi

N'guigmi

N'guigmi is a city and Commune of fifteen thousand in the eastern most part of Niger, very near to Lake Chad - lying on its shore until the lake retreated....

, and the Lake Chad

Lake Chad

Lake Chad is a historically large, shallow, endorheic lake in Africa, whose size has varied over the centuries. According to the Global Resource Information Database of the United Nations Environment Programme, it shrank as much as 95% from about 1963 to 1998; yet it also states that "the 2007 ...

 area along Niger's border with Chad

Chad

Chad , officially known as the Republic of Chad, is a landlocked country in Central Africa. It is bordered by Libya to the north, Sudan to the east, the Central African Republic to the south, Cameroon and Nigeria to the southwest, and Niger to the west...

. Around 40 km to the north of Goure are the Koutous hills, which form the first foothills of the Termit Massif

Termit Massif

The Termit Massif is a mountainous region in southeastern Niger. Just to the south of the dunes of Tenere desert and the Erg of Bilma, the northern areas of the Termit, called the Gossololom consists of black volcanic peaks which jut from surrounding sand seas...

. These hills also mark the northeastern boundary of Hausa

Hausa people

The Hausa are one of the largest ethnic groups in West Africa. They are a Sahelian people chiefly located in northern Nigeria and southeastern Niger, but having significant numbers living in regions of Cameroon, Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire, Chad and Sudan...

 settlement in Niger, with the desert and hills to the north sparsely populated by seasonal nomadic encampments, and the area to the east populated by a majority of settled Kanouri ethnic groups and Toubou

Toubou

The Tubu are an ethnic group that live mainly in northern Chad, but also in Libya, Niger and Sudan....

 pastoralists.

Agriculture and environment

The surrounding land is mostly dry grass Sahel

Sahel

The Sahel is the ecoclimatic and biogeographic zone of transition between the Sahara desert in the North and the Sudanian Savannas in the south.It stretches across the North African continent between the Atlantic Ocean and the Red Sea....

 dotted with acacia

Acacia

Acacia is a genus of shrubs and trees belonging to the subfamily Mimosoideae of the family Fabaceae, first described in Africa by the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in 1773. Many non-Australian species tend to be thorny, whereas the majority of Australian acacias are not...

 trees, with green patches formed by kouri

Kouri

Kouri is a village in the Saponé Department of Bazèga Province in central Burkina Faso. The village has a population of 925.-External links:*...

s (seasonal watercourses with underground water) and cuvettes (natural depressions which retain seasonal rain water. Farming is dominated by millet

Millet

The millets are a group of small-seeded species of cereal crops or grains, widely grown around the world for food and fodder. They do not form a taxonomic group, but rather a functional or agronomic one. Their essential similarities are that they are small-seeded grasses grown in difficult...

 production.

The area around Goure is particularly threatened by desertification, and was in 2005 designated at the very northeastern edge of Nigerien farm land able to support its population. The area has thus become a center for international anti-desertification

Desertification

Desertification is the degradation of land in drylands. Caused by a variety of factors, such as climate change and human activities, desertification is one of the most significant global environmental problems.-Definitions:...

 efforts, where experiments by local and foreign organisations promote the use of windbreaks and scrub grids to fix soil and stop the influx of dunes.

The agricultural region around Goure was devastated at several points since independence, with major droughts in the early 1970s, the mid 1980s, and locust

Locust

Locusts are the swarming phase of short-horned grasshoppers of the family Acrididae. These are species that can breed rapidly under suitable conditions and subsequently become gregarious and migratory...

-induced crop loss famine in 1977 and 2005.

Population

The town has grown since the 1960s, with its importance as a weighstation on Niger's primary east-west highway. In 1970, the town had a population of 2124, 7612 in 1977, 8951 in 1985, and a population of 13422 by 2001. Goure also has a landing strip, with ICAO Code DRZG.