This study examines the intersections between humanitarian aid and coloniality in Niger, revealing how the 2023 coup both intensified existing operational challenges and exposed deeper structural tensions embedded in the country’s humanitarian operations. Drawing on qualitative interviews with aid workers and experts, the study employs a decolonial framework to examine how humanitarian interventions continue to perpetuate neoliberal colonial standards, gendered hierarchies, and external humanitarian governance systems that undermine the local community’s agency and autonomy. While the coup has affected humanitarian access routes, further heightened security risks, and imposed new bureaucratic restrictions on humanitarian operations, findings further demonstrate that these obstacles are inseparable from the longstanding postcolonial power relations embedded in the neo-liberal governance system, which the majority of the Nigerien populace has rejected, for its complicity in their continued socio-economic and political disempowerment. The study further demonstrates that many Nigeriens still perceive aid organizations as extensions of the global neoliberal colonial order, thereby undermining the credibility of their claims to neutrality and highlighting their perceived complicity in the population’s current difficult socio-economic conditions. It argues that humanitarian effectiveness in coup-affected environments cannot meaningfully be achieved solely through operational adaptations. To address this, it is clear that the existing systems of neoliberal humanitarian operations require a comprehensive overhaul of how aid is delivered, with a focus on community agency, local knowledge, and collective decision-making. It also needs to break down the colonial structures that have shaped modern humanitarian governance in the country and most African countries. In view of the aforementioned, the study advocates for a decolonized humanitarian system that is structurally African, decolonized, and that can build trust between local populations and aid organizations, bolster resilience, and promote political stability in Niger and analogous contexts.
Olawale Olufemi Akinrinde (Wed,) studied this question.