Surrounded by other African countries with no access to water, Chad is sometimes vulnerable to its stronger neighbors. It is sparsely populated, with only about 11 million people, according to the CIA World Fact Book. The country is named after Lake Chad, a once-enormous body of water that has since shrunk, leaving a large crater-shaped basin in the north of the country. The Emi Koussi, a nonactive volcano, is the highest point in the Sahara.
Chad was an African colonial possession of the French until 1960. Upon gaining independence they were invaded by their northern neighbor, Libya, and experienced 30 years of civil war. The first president, Tombalbaye, had precipitated these problems by instituting an autocratic rule and eliminating other political parties. After oil exploration began in 2003, the civil war only worsened. Peace agreements were signed in 2006 but the government remains shaky and minority-dominated and rebel groups still threaten the country. The nonprofit organization Transparency International consistently ranks Chad as one of the most corrupt countries in the world.
The currency in Chad is the CFA Franc. Chad is an extremely poor country, both because of their history of colonization and war and because of the fact that only two percent of the country's land is arable. The country does have some natural resources, including petroleum, uranium, natron, kaolin, gold and limestone, among others. But the unstable nature of the country's politics has made it impossible to maximize profits from these industries. The United Nations has ranked Chad the fifth poorest country in the world and says that 80 percent of the population lives below the poverty line.
Chad is an extremely dry country because it is landlocked. Although Lake Chad is a shadow of its former self, it still remains Africa's second-largest wetland and a haven for various birds and reptiles. The northern part of Chad is considered a desert, while the southern part is hot and tropical. Some parts of the north get only an average of two inches of rain per year, while the south can get up to 35 inches. The wet season hits Chad from May to October, although it lasts for a shorter time in the north.
Chad is most often in the media not for its own problems but for the problems of its neighbor country, Sudan. The diaspora from Darfur began in earnest in the spring of 2003, when a Khartoum-based regime of Arabs tried to crush an uprising by the black African farmers in Darfur. The Arab horsemen, or "janjaweed," drove people from Darfur out of their villages and many ended up across the nearby border in refugee camps in Chad. The CIA World Factbook estimates that there are hundreds of thousands of Sudanese in Chad, straining that country's resources and infrastructure.
