Living in Niger

Niger sits among the world's lowest payers, with a small formal economy that offers few obvious footholds to an outsider. Against that, the cost of an ordinary life is low and tax takes almost nothing, though what survives to the end of the month is slight. French is the language of work here, and landing a job without local ties is the steepest part of the move.

Niger sits close to balance, with about 439.4K people abroad only narrowly outnumbering the 430.4K foreign-born residents at home. Both sides are tightly regional: the diaspora has grown 12% over the past decade and clusters in West Africa — Nigeria hosts the most at 129.5K, with Côte d'Ivoire and Benin next — while arrivals come largely from Nigeria and Mali.