{"id":553,"date":"2007-07-05T06:58:29","date_gmt":"2007-07-05T05:58:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/wordpress\/?p=553"},"modified":"2007-07-05T06:58:29","modified_gmt":"2007-07-05T05:58:29","slug":"forgotten-world-89-niger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=553","title":{"rendered":"Forgotten World (89):  Niger"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Historically a gateway between North and sub-Saharan Africa, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Niger\">Niger<\/a> is a large, landlocked country bordered by seven others. It came under French rule in the late 1890s. After independence in 1960, its progress was held back by political instability and a five-year drought which devastated livestock and crops.<br \/>\nToday Niger is rated by the United Nations as one of the world&#8217;s least-developed nations. With little primary education, it has one of the lowest literacy rates in the world. Its health system is basic and disease is widespread. Its 13M citizens have a life expectancy of only 44 years.<br \/>\nThe country&#8217;s main export, uranium, is prone to price fluctuations and agriculture is threatened by the encroaching desert.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Historically a gateway between North and sub-Saharan Africa, Niger is a large, landlocked country bordered by seven others. It came under French rule in the late 1890s. After independence in 1960, its progress was held back by political instability and a five-year drought which devastated livestock and crops. Today Niger is rated by the United [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}