Niger - Economic sectors

Niger depends most on agriculture, for both output and employment, and this fact reflects Niger's low level of development. Agriculture (including hunting, forestry, and fishing) employed 90 percent of the population in 1998 and provided 40 percent of the GDP. This is a much higher reliance on agriculture for production than is general in Africa, where, on average, 17 percent of the GDP comes from farming. The involvement of the labor force in agriculture, too, is well above the African norm, where on average 68 percent of the work-force are engaged in farming.

Industry (including mining, manufacturing, construction and power) employed 4 percent of the population (in Africa generally, it is 9 percent) and produced 18

percent of the GDP (the all-Africa figure is 34 percent). Services generated 42 percent of the GDP in 1988 (compared with Africa generally at 50 percent) and employed 6 percent of the working population (whereas the all-Africa figure was 23 percent).