Poverty and living conditions with Boko Haram in the Lake Chad Basin: the case of southeastern Niger

Abstract

SUMMARY This briefing analyses the political economy of Boko Haram and explains how the conflict dismantles the local economy, jeopardises living conditions and heightens tensions between local communities and public authorities. The conflict destroys the dynamism of the Lake Chad Basin economy based on cross-border trade in agricultural and fisheries products, and reduces many people to living in camps, where precarious living conditions and poverty become daily challenges, and where tensions between refugees, host populations and local authorities are recurrent.