Niger's military regime has announced it is putting uranium produced by Somaïr – a subsidiary of French nuclear giant Orano before the regime nationalised it in June – on the international market.
Uranium mining in Niger is at the centre of a standoff between the junta that took power in 2023 and nuclear producer Orano, which is 90-percent owned by the French government and has operated mines in Niger for decades.
The news was announced on state television Tele Sahel in a report Sunday evening citing comments by head of the junta General Abdourahamane Tiani.
Tiani, the report said, had claimed "Niger's legitimate right to dispose of its natural riches to sell them to whoever wants to buy them, under the rules of the market, in complete independence".
Russian Energy Minister Sergei Tsivilev said in July that Moscow wanted to mine uranium in Niger.
Since the junta took power in a 2023 coup, Niger has turned to Russia, which commands the world's largest arsenal of atomic weapons, for help in fighting the west African country's jihadist insurgency.
At the same time it has turned its back on former colonial power France, which it accused of supporting separatist groups.
One of world's largest uranium deposits
In December 2024, Orano acknowledged it had lost operational control of its three main mines in Niger: Somaïr, Cominak (closed since 2021) and Imouraren.
Imouraren has one of the largest uranium deposits in the world, with an estimated 200,000 tonnes.
Orano officially retains a 60 percent stake in the subsidiaries, and has undertaken various arbitration procedures against Niger to try to win back operational control.
Niger embraces Russia for uranium production leaving France out in the cold
In late September, Orano announced a tribunal had ruled in its favour concerning the nationalisation of Somaïr in June.
It said the court ordered Niger not to sell uranium produced by Somaïr, which holds around 1,300 tonnes of concentrate on site with a market value of €250 million.
According to information recently published by LSI Africa and Wamaps – a group of West African journalists specialising in security news in the Sahel – a convoy carrying 1,000 tonnes of uranium recently left Arlit, a town in the north where the Somaïr site is located, to reach the port of Lomé, the Togolese capital, via Burkina Faso.
Niger in 2022 accounted for about a quarter of the natural uranium supplied to European nuclear power plants, according to data from the atomic organisation Euratom.
(with newswires)
