Nigeriens

Nigeriens are the second-largest foreign community in Libya, about 182,000 people in 2026 besides the Tuareg of the far southwest, three in four of them in the west around Tripoli, Misrata and Zliten. Most are young Hausa and Zarma men from Niger's main migrant regions, Tahoua, Tillabéri and Dosso, who come for a year or two to work on farms, building sites and in day labour, then go home with their savings, a circular migration that goes back to the oil boom of the 1970s and a 1988 Libya-Niger agreement on the movement of people. They reach Libya by the desert road from Agadez through Dirkou and Madama to Qatrun and Sabha, and many are sent back the same way: trucks of deportees regularly arrive at Séguédine and Dirkou in Niger's Kawar oases. Nigerien Tuareg who work around Ubari and Ghat live among Libya's own Tuareg and are counted with them. Nearly all are Sunni Muslims, and Hausa serves as a common language among Nigeriens of different peoples.

Nigeriens in Saudi Arabia, citizens of Niger rather than of neighbouring Nigeria, are about 34,000 people, slightly more women than men, a community of families. Most are Hausa-speaking Muslims, with Zarma, Fulani and Kanuri among them, from families that came on the Hajj and stayed, and many were born in the kingdom without Saudi papers. They share the West African quarters of Mecca and Jeddah with Nigerians and Chadians, working as traders, porters, cleaners, tailors and domestic workers, and those who overstay pilgrim visas face detention and deportation. Hausa is their common tongue at home, while their children grow up speaking the Arabic of the Hejaz.