Hamsou Garba

Hamsou Garba (sometimes Habsou) (25 December 1958 – 5 December 2022) was a Nigerien singer.

Biography A native of Maradi, Garba attended a French-run school for a while when she was a child but left it to transfer to an Arabic-French madrassa instead, which afforded her the opportunity to sing. Her emergence as a performer was so politically important that she was granted a state position at city hall with wages. Besides singing, she worked as a talk radio host during her career as well; she also performed with the group Anashua or Annashuwa, of which she was a founding member at its establishment in 1991. Her first album, Gargadi, was only released in 2008; it was followed in 2009 by Tout est possible, and as of 2011 she was working on two more, Les hommes de l’histoire and Aouran dollé. As a performer, she traveled widely throughout West Africa. having been accused by the authorities of inciting civil disobedience for writing and performing a song describing Amadou as "Niger's Mandela" and calling for the presidency of Mahamadou Issoufou to end like that of Goodluck Jonathan.

Garba's work has been discussed in the book Engaging Modernity: Muslim Women and the Politics of Agency in Postcolonial Niger by Ousseina Alidou.