N'guigmi is a city and Commune

Communes of Niger

The Departments of Niger are subdivided into communes. As of 2005, in the seven Regions and one Capital Area, there were 36 départements, divided into 265 communes, 122 cantons and 81 groupements...

 of fifteen thousand in the eastern most part of Niger

Niger

Niger , officially named the Republic of Niger, is a landlocked country in Western Africa, named after the Niger River. It borders Nigeria and Benin to the south, Burkina Faso and Mali to the west, Algeria and Libya to the north and Chad to the east...

, very near to Lake Chad

Lake Chad

Lake Chad is a historically large, shallow, endorheic lake in Africa, whose size has varied over the centuries. According to the Global Resource Information Database of the United Nations Environment Programme, it shrank as much as 95% from about 1963 to 1998; yet it also states that "the 2007 ...

 - lying on its shore until the lake retreated.

N'guigmi is a military center for the region, a centre for the salt

Salt

In chemistry, salts are ionic compounds that result from the neutralization reaction of an acid and a base. They are composed of cations and anions so that the product is electrically neutral...

 trade from Kaourar and is the last stop on the road to Chad

Chad

Chad , officially known as the Republic of Chad, is a landlocked country in Central Africa. It is bordered by Libya to the north, Sudan to the east, the Central African Republic to the south, Cameroon and Nigeria to the southwest, and Niger to the west...

. It marks the end of the paved section of the Nigerien Route Nationale 1, although the sections past Diffa are notorious for their poor condition. Three unpaved highways connect to N'guigmi from the north, providing the main road route between Chad and Niger, and another one of two land routes to the Kaourar Oasis town of Bilma

Bilma

Bilma is an oasis town in north east Niger with a population of around 2,500 people. It lies protected from the desert dunes under the Kaouar Cliffs and is the largest town along the Kaouar escarpment...

.

The town lies at the mouth of the Dilia Bosso, an ancient river valley and seasonal wash that runs from the Termit Massif

Termit Massif

The Termit Massif is a mountainous region in southeastern Niger. Just to the south of the dunes of Tenere desert and the Erg of Bilma, the northern areas of the Termit, called the Gossololom consists of black volcanic peaks which jut from surrounding sand seas...

 over 200 km to the northwest to what was the shore of Lake Chad

Lake Chad

Lake Chad is a historically large, shallow, endorheic lake in Africa, whose size has varied over the centuries. According to the Global Resource Information Database of the United Nations Environment Programme, it shrank as much as 95% from about 1963 to 1998; yet it also states that "the 2007 ...

 as recently as the mid 20th century. The town was then a centre of Kanuri fishing communities. By the 2000s, even during the rainy season, the nearest access to water was at the village of Doro (a Beri-beri name for "Fishing port") 45 km southwest of N'guigmi. During the Sahel drought

Sahel drought

[[File:Greening Sahel 1982-1999.jpg|thumb|300px|Recent "Greening" of the Sahel: The results of trend analyses of time series over the Sahel region of seasonally integrated NDVI using NOAA AVHRR NDVI-data from 1982 to 1999...

 of the mid-1970s the shore was 85 km away from N'guigmi in Chad.

The town is the seat of the Department of N'guigmi, one of three in Diffa Region, which includes the entire north of the Region. N'guigmi is home to a large settlement of Kanuri people, as well as settled members of the traditionally pastoral Wodaabe

Wodaabe

The Wodaabe or Bororo are a small subgroup of the Fulani ethnic group. They are traditionally nomadic cattle-herders and traders in the Sahel, with migrations stretching from southern Niger, through northern Nigeria, northeastern Cameroon, and the western region of the Central African Republic....

-Fulani and Daza

Daza

The Daza people are a semi-nomadic ethnicity living primarily in the Sahara regions of south-eastern Niger and north and central Chad. They consider themselves a warrior people, and are almost entirely Muslim. The Daza speak the Dazaga language. The increasing desertification of Africa has resulted...

/Toubou

Toubou

The Tubu are an ethnic group that live mainly in northern Chad, but also in Libya, Niger and Sudan....

ethnic groups.