These improvements should enhance the regional potential of the market by developing sales and storage spaces protected from bad weather as well as service, sanitation and roads that can adequately serve the intense weekly market attendance. One-third of women and one-quarter of men remarked that their activities were slowed by a lack of roads or because of the degraded state of existing axes. The Dendi region is located at a strategic crossroads of the Nigerien National Route (RN7) stretching from Niamey to the east of Niger, of the principal Kebbi road axis leading to Sokoto and the national interstate (RNIE2) that crosses Benin to the Gulf of Guinea. Despite this theoretically privileged position, the Dendi has an underdeveloped and rapidly deteriorating road system (Map 6.21.