Coronavirus is not the first shock that has hit Nigers migration routes in recent years. In 2015, when Europes migration-crisis hit its peak, Niger became the unofficial southern border of the European Union.

Over the last five years, Brussels has poured hundreds of millions of euros into the impoverished country in a desperate attempt to stop the flow of migrants. Under EU pressure, the Nigerien government adopted a harsh law banning people smuggling and cracked down on age-old desert trade routes.

The crackdown had the effect EU officials wanted. Migration through Niger on to Libya fell from more than 300,000 in 2016 to about 10,000 in 2018, according to the European Parliament.

However, the crackdown has wrought havoc on many peoples livelihoods. It is estimated that about half of Agadezs 120,000 residents profit in some way from the migration routes through the desert.

Overnight the 2015 anti-smuggling legislation turned what was effectively a thriving retail economy in northern Niger into a criminal one. Humanitarians say the crackdown pushed smuggling operations underground and forced many migrants to take increasingly dangerous routes through the Sahara.

To make matters worse, Algeria started to expel African migrants and refugees en masse in 2017. A reported 25,000 people were deported from Algeria back to Niger in 2018 alone.

Over the last three years, the Algerian security forces have left thousands of people, including pregnant women and children in the middle of the desert, to walk back to civilisation or die in temperatures well above 40c.

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'They cannot go up and they cannot go back': Pandemic leaves migrants stranded in the Sahara - Telegraph.co.uk