Stories behind the film

By Rob Lemkin: The oral history and official archives detailing Voulet's mission, in danger of being lost to history and covered up by the colonial powers. Our film brings centre-stage for the first time the collective oral history of the colonisation of Niger as it lives on in the hearts and minds of Nigeriens today. But we also made considerable use of written records, or at least what survives, of [...]

By Femi Nylander: “Our guards in Niger, the soldiers, young men my own age, told me that because I am from Europe then, to them, I might as well be white.” My white English grandmother tells me that whereas she is looking at the problems of colonialism from ‘the outside’, I see it from ‘the inside.’ She spent decades of her life in Africa. I grew up in Britain. I [...]

By Rob Lemkin: Joseph Conrad's visceral critique of colonial power rooted in fact, not fiction and still causing controversy today Heart of Darkness is one of the most widely read and discussed classics of English literature. It ranks among fiction’s most searing critiques of imperialism while also coming under strong criticism itself for being racist. It shone a light on colonial atrocity when empire was the primary  source of wealth [...]

By Femi Nylander: 2 years after Voulet, men, women and children were marched at gunpoint to serve as labour teams to build the road. Women and children hauled buckets of laterite rock from the bush; men pounded the material and levelled it into the road. Paul Voulet was making his way through territory that Europeans had not yet fully mapped. With an expeditionary force of 2000 people, he needed always [...]

By Rob Lemkin: The enduring legacy of colonialism is in the communities still left behind, and the young people forced to leave The dusty town of May Jirgui lies just off Niger’s main highway, Route Nationale 1, over 500 miles to the east of the capital Niamey. It’s no different from hundreds of other towns and villages across this country. Except for one thing: it’s the site of the grave [...]

By Femi Nylander: Niger was home to the world's first solar powered machine, an advance ignored in the West's rush for the country's Uranium resource It is the paradox of Niger that despite its dark colonial history it is one of the sunniest countries in the world. In the 1960s in the years after colonial rule it was a global pioneer in solar energy research. It set up the Solar Energy [...]

By Femi Nylander: As recently as 2014 Niger was receiving uranium royalties that were half the sums paid to Australia and Canada for their equivalent uranium reserves. Niger achieved independence from France in 1960 but one of the conditions for that independence was a Defence Treaty that gave France priority access to strategic material deemed crucial for France’s security. These materials included principally uranium which had been discovered under the Sahara in [...]

By Rob Lemkin: Eye witness testimony: one of 800 women abducted by Voulet in 1899 and interviewed in 1970. It took 2 years to track down and rescue the recording Voulet’s mission held around 800 women captive at any one time in its progress across Niger. These women became slaves allocated to French officers and African auxiliaries for sexual and domestic services. Voulet himself is reported to have spent the [...]