Word: niger
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Lunar Landscapes. Soustelle's empire is only a part of the world's largest desert; by usual geographers' reckoning, the Sahara runs from the Atlas Mountains south to the Niger and from Africa's Atlantic Coast east to the Red Sea. But even the French Community's half of the Sahara is awesome in size (1,600,000 sq. mi. v. 213,000 for France) and bewildering in its diversity. Barely a seventh of it is the movie desert of The Sheik-the vast expanses of sand wind-blown into golden dunes. The rest...
...right ancestry to favor a big role. Though Africa was, until the Europeans came, the continent that could not write, it had known its times of glory. Guinea was once part of the powerful Mali Empire that stretched from the French Sudan, on the upper reaches of the Niger, to just short of West Africa's Atlantic Coast. When its 14th century ruler, the Mansa (Sultan) Musa, made his pilgrimage to Mecca, he traveled with a caravan of 60,000 men, and among his camels were 80 that each bore 300 Ibs. of gold. He built his wife...
...rules" was that no nation could set up a "sphere of influence" in Africa unless it had effectively occupied the area. Some immediate results: the Germans rushed into the Cameroons, driving the British merchants out; the British hastily set up the Oil Rivers Protectorate on the Niger Delta to keep the Germans out; the French sent garrisons into West Africa, occupied Conakry...
...Ivory Coast, and the only African of ministerial rank in De Gaulle's government. Houphouet-Boigny is afraid that his Ivory Coast, the richest country in the area, might have to foot most of the bills. He not only kept the Ivory Coast out, but persuaded Niger to stay out, too. His lobbyists were less successful in the Voltaic Republic, though they had recently sent a truckload of wedding gifts to the emperor of the country's Mossi tribe...
...results in the overseas territories were as astonishing. Only French Guinea, in the control of tough anti-Gaullist Premier Sekou Toure, voted no. Senegal, Niger, even supposedly sullen Madagascar came through with thumping oui majorities...