Chad

Chad runs from the heart of the Sahara to the wooded savannah of the south, and is named after the shallow lake on its western edge. In the north the volcanic Tibesti rises to Emi Koussi, the highest summit in the Sahara, and the sandstone Ennedi Plateau shelters natural arches. Between them lie the blue and green lakes of Ounianga, fed by ancient groundwater, and to the south-west the Bodélé Depression, whose dust blows across the Atlantic to the Amazon.

A skull nicknamed Toumaï, found in the Djurab Desert in 2001, may belong to one of the earliest members of the human family. Around the lake the Kanem empire took shape by the ninth century, later adopting Islam and shifting west to Bornu. French forces defeated Rabih az-Zubayr at Kousséri in 1900, and Chad became part of French Equatorial Africa. In August 1940 its governor, Félix Éboué, rallied the colony to de Gaulle’s Free France. Independence came in August 1960.

The Toubou of the Tibesti, Arab cattle herders of the Sahel and Sara farmers of the south are among dozens of peoples; Islam prevails in the north and centre, Christianity and older faiths in the south. Meals revolve around boule, a dough of millet or sorghum dipped in okra sauce. Gum arabic, cotton from Moundou and cattle and camels sold abroad were long the mainstays; since 2003 oil from the Doba basin has flowed by pipeline to Kribi on the Cameroonian coast.