Niger

Niger: Thin Fiscal Base and Weak Democratic Institutions

Niger's economy produced $19.9 billion in gross domestic product in 2024, per World Bank World Development Indicators (WDI), or roughly $735 per person across a population of just over 27 million recorded the same year. Government debt stood at 45.5% of GDP in 2026, according to IMF World Economic Outlook (WEO) projections.

Military expenditure reached $488.9 million in 2025, per SIPRI's Military Expenditure Database, equal to 2.136% of GDP on SIPRI's own GDP series for that year — a ratio drawn entirely from SIPRI's figures rather than the World Bank GDP cited above. Active personnel stood at 33,000 as of 2022, per the Correlates of War National Material Capabilities (COW NMC) dataset, which also puts Niger's Composite Index of National Capability (CINC) score at 0.0011241941 for that year, a measure of its share of aggregated global material power.

V-Dem's 2025 data describe constrained political institutions: an electoral democracy index of 0.227 and a liberal democracy index of 0.177 on V-Dem's 0-to-1 scale. State capacity scored higher, at 0.578, indicating the administrative apparatus functions somewhat more robustly than the formal channels of political contestation around it.

Niger's CINC score reflects the Correlates of War project's composite of population, military personnel, military spending, and industrial indicators into a single measure of a state's share of aggregated global material capability, rather than any one input taken alone.

Energy consumption is minimal. Our World in Data puts primary energy use at 0.0489 exajoules in 2023 and electricity generation at 0.95 terawatt-hours in 2024, both figures consistent with a population that has limited access to grid electricity according to this dataset.

Data gaps

Two energy series are stale: oil production of 8.276 terawatt-hours and gas production of zero are both dated 2016, nearly a decade old, and should not be treated as current output levels. No foreign exchange reserves figure appears in this bundle. As noted above, the milex-to-GDP ratio rests on SIPRI's own GDP accounting and should not be recalculated against the World Bank's GDP figure.

Sources: World Bank World Development Indicators; IMF World Economic Outlook; SIPRI Military Expenditure Database; Correlates of War National Material Capabilities; V-Dem v15; Our World in Data (Energy).