According to an official toll released on Saturday, flooding brought on by excessive rain in Niger has killed 195 people and affected more than 322,000.
One of the deadliest rainy seasons in the history of the West African nation occurred this year.
According to statistics from the Civil Protection Service reviewed by AFP, as of October 21, 211 people had been reported injured while 59 people had drowned and 136 had died in crumbling homes.
More than 263,000 people in Niger, which is located in the dry Sahel, were reportedly hit by floods during the rainy season earlier this month, which claimed 192 lives.
More than 30,000 dwellings, 83 classrooms, 6 health centres, and 235-grain stores have been damaged by the rains.
Maradi and Zinder in the centre of the nation, Dosso in the southwest, and Tahoua in the west are the areas that have been most severely impacted.
The death toll during the rainy season, which typically begins in June and can linger until October, has been especially high this year.
70 persons lost their lives and 200,000 people were harmed in 2021. There were 73 fatalities in 2020.
The biggest floods in a decade have killed more than 600 people in neighbouring Nigeria since June.
“According to all our studies, we can link these rains to climate change,” head of the national meteorological agency Katiellou Gaptia Lawan told AFP.
The “rainfall is intense”, while runoff water can no longer make its way into the soil because it has been “degraded by human activity”, he explained.