12 Things You Didn’t Know About Niger’s President Mahamadou Issoufou

Issoufou is an engineer by trade

After training in France in engineering during the late 1970s, Issoufou returned to Niger in 1979 to serve as director of mines, a post he held from 1980 to 1985. Following this, he became the secretary general of the French-controlled Mining Company of Niger (or Société des Mines de l’Aïr/SOMAIR), where he stayed until his foray into fulltime politics in 1993.