Niamey (French pronunciation: [njaˈmɛ]) is the capital and largest city of the West African country of Niger. Niamey lies on the Niger River, primarily situated on the east bank. It is an administrative, cultural and economic centre. Niamey's population, which was estimated at 774,235 in 2006, is now projected to be much higher.

The city is located in a pearl millet growing region, while manufacturing industries include bricks, ceramic goods, cement and weaving.

Niamey was probably founded in the eighteenth century, but was of little importance to most of the country until the French developed a colonial post in the 1890s. This rapidly grew into an important center. In 1926 it became the capital of Niger, and the population gradually increased, from about 3,000 in 1930 to around 30,000 in 1960. The period from 1970 to 1988 was one in which the economy of Niger boomed, driven by revenue from the uranium mines at Arlit. In this period, the population of Niamey grew from 108,000 to 398,365 inhabitants. The city expanded from 1,367 hectares (3,380 acres) in 1970 to 4,400 hectares (11,000 acres) by 1977, in the process annexing peripheral villages such as Lazaret.

Cheikh Anta Diop (29 December 1923 in Thieytou, Diourbel Region – 7 February 1986 in Dakar) was a historian, anthropologist, physicist, and politician who studied the human race's origins and pre-colonial African culture. Cheikh Anta Diop University, in Dakar, Senegal is named after him.

Diop was born to an aristocratic Muslim Wolof family in Senegal where he was educated in a traditional Islamic school. Diop's family was part of the Mouride sect, the only independent Muslim group in Africa according to Diop. He obtained a bachelor's degree in Senegal before moving to Paris for graduate studies where he ended his scholastic education.

In 1946, at the age of 23, Diop went to Paris to become a physicist. He remained there for 15 years, studying physics under Frédéric Joliot-Curie, Marie Curie's son-in-law, and ultimately translating parts of Einstein's Theory of Relativity into his native Wolof.

Diop's education included History, Egyptology, Physics, Linguistics, Anthropology, Economics, and Sociology. While studying in Paris, Diop studied under André Aymard, professor of History and later Dean of the Faculty of Letters at the University of Paris through which he "gained an understanding of the Greco-Latin world. As a student of Gaston Bachelard, Frédéric Joliot-Curie, André Leroi-Gourhan, and others" Diop "acquired proficiency in such diverse disciplines as rationalism, dialectics, modern scientific techniques, prehistoric archeology and so on." Diop was also "the only Black African of his generation to have received training as an Egyptologist." "More importantly" he "applied this encyclopedic knowledge to his researches on African history."