Chadتشاد · Tchad

Chad's deep past is exceptional. In 2001 a team led by Michel Brunet found a skull about seven million years old in the Djurab desert — Sahelanthropus tchadensis, nicknamed Toumaï ('hope of life') — one of the oldest known members of the human lineage. Rock art in the Ennedi and Tibesti records a green Sahara of cattle herders, giraffes and hunters thousands of years ago.

From about the 9th century the Kanem empire, later Kanem-Bornu, grew rich around Lake Chad on the trans-Saharan trade in salt, horses and enslaved people, and its rulers adopted Islam by the 11th century. The sultanates of Baguirmi and Ouaddaï rose later, raiding the south for captives. In the 1890s the warlord Rabih az-Zubayr conquered much of the region; French forces killed him at the Battle of Kousséri in 1900, and Chad became the most neglected corner of French Equatorial Africa.

Independence came in 1960 under François Tombalbaye, a southerner. Northern and eastern grievances fed the FROLINAT rebellion from 1965 and a civil war in which factions, backed variously by Libya and France, fought for N'Djamena. Libya occupied the Aouzou Strip; in the 1987 'Toyota War', Chadian forces in pickup trucks drove the Libyan army out. Hissène Habré ruled from 1982 to 1990 through a secret police that killed tens of thousands; in 2016 a special court in Senegal convicted him of crimes against humanity, the first time an African court tried a former head of another African state.

Idriss Déby, a Zaghawa commander, ousted Habré in 1990 and ruled for 31 years, surviving rebel attacks on N'Djamena in 2006 and 2008 and making Chad's army a key force against jihadists in the Sahel. He was killed at the front in April 2021; a military council under his son Mahamat took power, protests were crushed in October 2022, and Mahamat Déby was elected president in May 2024. Chad ended its defence agreement with France, whose last troops left in January 2025.

More than 200 ethnic groups live in Chad. In the south the Sara and related peoples, farmers of cotton and millet, are mostly Christian or follow traditional religions and dominated the colonial-era civil service. The north and centre are home to Arab pastoralists, the Kanembu around Lake Chad, the Toubou (Teda and Daza) of the Tibesti and Borkou, the Zaghawa on the Sudan border, and the Maba of Ouaddaï.

Islam, mostly Sunni with strong Sufi brotherhoods such as the Tijaniyya, is followed by just over half the population; Christianity by about four in ten. Chadian Arabic is the common language of markets across the country, while French and Modern Standard Arabic are both official.

Chad hosts one of the largest refugee populations in Africa: Sudanese fleeing the Darfur war since 2003 and in much larger numbers since 2023, and Central Africans in the south. Camps around Adré, Farchana and Iriba stretch local water and food.

Chad runs 1,700 km from the Sahara to the edge of the tropical forest. The north is desert, with the volcanic Tibesti mountains rising to 3,415 m at Emi Koussi and the sandstone Ennedi massif of arches, canyons and gueltas, where a few Saharan crocodiles survived into this century. The Lakes of Ounianga, fed by fossil groundwater in the middle of the desert, are a UNESCO site.

The Sahel belt, with a single rainy season from June to September, carries herders and millet farmers; the south is savanna with the Chari and Logone rivers. Lake Chad, shared with Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon, has shrunk dramatically since the 1960s and fluctuates with the rains; its islands have become hideouts for armed groups.

Zakouma National Park in the south-east, managed by African Parks since 2010, became a conservation success story after poaching had cut its elephants from thousands to a few hundred; herds are growing again, and black rhinos were reintroduced in 2018.

Daily food is millet or sorghum porridge (boule) with sauces of okra, dried fish, meat or leaves; Chadian Arabs drink camel and cow milk and eat grilled mutton; around Lake Chad, dried and smoked fish is a major trade. Tea — strong, sweet and poured from a height in three rounds — is the centre of hospitality in the north.

Music ranges from the griots of the Sahel and the Sara drum and xylophone traditions to modern Chadian artists who blend them with Afro-pop and reggae. Wrestling, horse festivals and the Gerewol courtship gatherings of the Wodaabe in the Sahel draw crowds in the dry season.

Chad's film director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun made international art-house cinema in N'Djamena: 'Abouna' (2002), 'Daratt' (2006) and 'A Screaming Man' (2010), which won a prize at Cannes.