Chad is a large, landlocked country in north-central Africa, named after the great lake on its western edge that it shares with its neighbours. Stretching from the Sahara in the north through the Sahel to wetter savanna in the south, it is a land of striking contrasts and ancient history, where some of the oldest traces of human ancestors have been found. One of the poorest and least developed countries in the world, Chad has been troubled by drought, conflict, and the shrinking of its namesake lake.
The region around Lake Chad was the seat of the powerful Kanem-Bornu Empire, which for a thousand years controlled the trans-Saharan trade routes linking Central Africa to the Mediterranean world and embraced Islam early. Other kingdoms also flourished in the area. France conquered the territory in the early twentieth century, ruling it as part of French Equatorial Africa, and Chad became independent in 1960. Its history since has been dominated by civil wars and rivalry between its northern and southern regions.
Chad spans three sharply different zones. The vast Saharan north is true desert, including the volcanic Tibesti Mountains, the highest in the Sahara. The central belt is the semi-arid Sahel, and the south is wetter savanna with the country's best farmland. The defining feature, on the western border, is Lake Chad, once one of the largest lakes in Africa but now drastically shrunken through drought and water use, a striking example of environmental change in the region.
The flag of Chad has three vertical bands of blue, gold, and red. It combines the colours of the French tricolour, recalling the colonial past, with the pan-African colours: the blue is taken to represent the sky, hope, and the waters of the south, the gold the sun and the deserts of the north, and the red progress, unity, and the blood shed for the nation. The flag is nearly identical to that of Romania, a coincidence of similar colour choices.
Chad is religiously divided in a way that broadly follows its geography. The northern and central regions are predominantly Muslim, a faith that came across the Sahara long ago and is followed by a slight majority of the population, while the south is largely Christian, both Catholic and Protestant, the result of missionary activity, along with people who follow traditional African religions. This north-south religious and cultural divide has been a significant factor in the country's troubled politics and conflicts.
Chadian cuisine is based on grains and is adapted to a dry climate. A staple is a thick porridge of millet, sorghum, or maize, known as boule, eaten with sauces made from vegetables, leaves, okra, or peanuts and sometimes meat or dried fish. Rice and beans are also common, and along the rivers and Lake Chad, freshwater fish are an important food. Dairy from the herds of the pastoral peoples and grilled meat round out a diet shaped by the Sahel.
Agriculture and herding are the mainstay of life for most people in Chad, despite the harsh environment. In the wetter south, farmers grow cotton, the main cash crop and a major export, along with sorghum, millet, peanuts, and other foods, while in the drier centre and north, pastoralists herd cattle, camels, sheep, and goats. The discovery and export of oil in the south has become economically important, though much of the population still depends directly on the land.
The Kanem-Bornu Empire and the trans-Saharan trade shaped the region's early history, and the area is famous in science for the discovery of some of the oldest known fossils of human ancestors, including one nicknamed Toumai, dating back millions of years. Since independence in 1960, Chad has been racked by civil wars and by conflict between rival factions and regions, as well as by drought and the dramatic shrinking of Lake Chad, which has deepened hardship in the area.
Chad has a population of around 18 million people, made up of some 200 ethnic groups speaking a great many languages, with French and Arabic serving as official languages. The population is broadly divided between the Muslim peoples of the north and centre and the more Christian and traditional-religion peoples of the south, a divide central to the country's history. Most Chadians are farmers or herders living in the southern half of the country, and the capital and largest city is N'Djamena, near Lake Chad.
