HYDROLOGICAL FLOW ASSESSMENT OF THE NIGER BASIN 2014-2015

INTRODUCTION

The Niger River takes its source in the mountains of Fouta-Djalon in Guinea and crosses successively Mali, Niger, Benin and Nigeria where it’s ended into the Atlantic Ocean after crossing approximately 4200 km. It is the third longer river of Africa, 14^th of the world and 9^th from the point of view of the size of its catchment area. Its active basin covers a surface of approximately 1,5 million km 2 shared by nine (9) countries gathered within the Niger Basin Authority (NBA), these are : Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroun, Côte d’ivoire, Guinea, Mali, Niger, Nigeria and Chad. The major tributary Benue takes its source in Chad before crossing Cameroun to join the River Niger at Lokoja in Nigeria.

The hydrological year of the Niger River starts on June 1^st and ends on May 31^st of the following year.

This hydrological assessment of the Niger River for this 2014/2015 hydrological year state the flow analysis at the representative stations of the basin: Koulikoro (in Mali) for the Upper Niger, Dire for the Inland Delta (in Mali); Niamey for the Middle Niger (in Niger) and Lokoja for Lower Niger (in Nigeria). (Fig.1.a)

Flows monitoring during this 2014-2015 hydrological year was carried out within the framework of the IWRM2/Niger-HYCOS project activities from over hundred hydrometric stations equipped with data collection platforms (DCP) Satlink type, some electronic Liminigraphs GSM transmission, BLU radio or simple Gage plates scales followed by gage readers which transmit data to the national hydrological services (NHS) and Project Regional Center by GSM, Internet and other classical means of data collection.