Niamey: The status of French, which was designated as Niger’s official language during colonial times, was revoked in March 2025, with Hausa becoming the new official language. This decision has not been well received within Nigerien society, especially as diplomatic tensions with France continue to worsen.

According to Global Voices, on March 17, 2025, the Republic of the Niger and Burkina Faso announced their withdrawal from the International Organisation of La Francophonie (OIF). The next day, March 18, 2025, Mali followed suit. Since Niger and Mali were two founding nations of the organisation, the withdrawal of these three countries, also members of the Alliance of Sahel States, deals yet another blow to this international institution.

Niger’s National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland, the body governing the country’s institutions since the July 26, 2023 coup, posted on its X account: A few days after this announcement, the Nigerien military authorities made the decision to further cut ties with France: French was relegated to the status of a working language, whilst Hausa was designated as the official language. A mere 13 percent of people speak French in the country.

Although the use of national languages is encouraged from an early age, French has always been the dominant language used in teaching in the country. In 2018, as more and more children and young people dropped out of school, the government decided to strengthen instruction in local languages. In an article from the French newspaper Le Monde in February 2018, Rabiou Rachida, a contract teacher for the first year of bilingual primary education (CIB), explained the importance of education in local languages—an argument supported by Niger’s current ruling military authorities.

However, in a WhatsApp interview with Global Voices, Affiz Ousmane, a student at Dan Dicko Dankoulodo University (UDDM) in the town of Maradi, in the centre of the country, suggests that such a rapid change in the status of French may negatively affect the education system.

Since the July 26, 2023 coup, it is clear that relations between Niger and France have deteriorated, resulting in a deep transformation of Nigerien society. Already in October 2024, military authorities started to strip any French names from avenues, monuments, and other public spaces, replacing them with people’s names, giving these spaces a purely Nigerien identity.