Aid with Blinkers: Environmental Governance of Uranium Mining in Niger

•Grave environmental issues have represented a ‘blind spot’ in the aid portfolio.•This owes to a ‘crisis discourse’ on Niger and geopolitical interests of donors.•Domestic reforms must be backed by transnational accountability mechanisms.

SummaryThe role of development cooperation in fostering improved environmental governance of extractive industries in African countries exposed to the expanding global uranium frontier remains ambiguous. With primary data, this paper demonstrates how foreign aid to Niger has ignored grievances on grave environmental impacts and rampant institutional failures while a crisis discourse on desertification and food insecurity diverts attention from geopolitical interests in mineral wealth. We argue that aid delivery remains insufficient to address structural deficiencies cemented by decades of investment-friendly ‘politics of mining’ and conclude that domestic reforms must be backed by stronger transnational accountability mechanisms to overcome corporate impunity.