Informal economy

The formal economy is very small, and so many people basically survive from whatever work they can find. This is even more true outside of Niamey. In these photos, you see harvested wood from the savana (dry wood only, I am told) being sold road-side to trucks wanting to take it to Niamey.

Since the population of Niamey has limited access to electricity or natural gas for cooking, many people cook on woodstoves. This leads to massive deforestation, of course, as woodland are not sustainably managed (or managed at all). In a final irony, some of this wood gets transported on the back of oil trankers, which shows that oil companies are into renewable energy - or that they don't pay their drivers enough.