NewsTracker Answers for week of July 31, 2023

Q: Niger’s military last week seized both power and the president, who was the nation’s first elected leader to succeed another since independence in 1960. The general who headed the president’s guard declared himself the leader of military junta now ruling the country. Where is the landlocked West African nation of Niger?

Circle the area on this map

Q: With Niger’s coup, a line of six countries stretching 3,500 miles from coast to coast are now ruled by leaders who seized power by force. That line extends from the Atlantic Ocean to which body of water?

A. Arabian Sea

B. Mediterranean Sea

C. Persian Gulf

D. Red Sea

D. Africa’s coup belt runs from Guinea on the Atlantic Ocean, though Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Chad to Sudan on the Red Sea, which is an arm of the Indian Ocean that separates Africa and Asia.

Q: Other than Guinea, the coup nations lie in a hot semi-arid region that runs along the southern edge of the Sahara Desert. What is this region of Africa called?

A. Great Escarpment

B. Maghreb

C. Sahel

D. Sudanian Savanna

C. The Sahel is typically hot, sunny, dry and windy all year long. There are frequent shortages of food and water, exacerbated by a growing population driven by very high birth rates. The region is also plagued by jihadist insurgent attacks from groups including Boko Haram, Islamic State and al-Qaeda.

Q: Some demonstrators supporting the coup attacked the embassy of a nation that once ruled Niger as a colony. Niger gained independence from which European nation in 1960?

A. Britain

B. France

C. Germany

D. Portugal

B. France once ruled what is now Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Chad. Sudan was once a British colony.

Q: Other demonstrators in Niger took to the streets waving flags of which country that has been gaining influence in Africa?

A. China

B. India

C. Russia

D. Saudi Arabia

C. Russian mercenaries are backing regimes in Libya, Sudan, Mozambique, Madagascar, Central African Republic and Mali. And, Russian mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, who remains active despite leading a failed mutiny last month, called the coup “a struggle of the people of Niger with their colonizers” and offered his fighters' services to bring order.