Chad

Chad is a country in Africa.

It is far from the sea. The north is hot, sandy desert. The south is green and grassy. The capital city is called N'Djamena.

Chad is a big country in north-central Africa. It is the fifth-largest country on the continent, and it has no coastline: its capital, N'Djamena, is about 1,600 kilometers by road from the nearest ports on Africa's west coast.

Much of northern Chad lies in the Sahara Desert. Farther south come dry grasslands and thorn bushes, and then, in the far south, tall grasses with scattered trees. Most people live by farming, growing cotton in the south and raising cattle in the middle of the country. About 21 million people lived in Chad in 2025.

Chad is a landlocked country in north-central Africa and, according to Britannica, the fifth-largest on the continent, with a total area of 1,284,000 km². Its capital, N'Djamena (formerly Fort-Lamy), lies almost 1,600 km by road from the West African coastal ports. Physically, the country is a shallow basin that rises gradually from the Lake Chad area in the west and is rimmed by mountains to the north, east and south.

Much of the north lies in the Sahara, so the population is thinly spread: Britannica's 2026 estimate gives about 17.9 people per km². The World Bank counted 21,003,705 people in 2025. Most people live by agriculture, with cotton in the south and cattle in the central region, and Chad has produced oil since 2003.

N'Djamena is the biggest city in Chad.

It sits where two rivers meet. In the north, wind and water carved rocks into arches. There are also bright blue and green lakes in the middle of the desert.

N'Djamena, the capital, stands where the Logone River joins the Chari River. About one in four people in Chad live in towns, and N'Djamena is by far the largest. Other towns include Moundou, Sarh and Abéché, and Bongor in the south.

Two of Chad's most amazing places are in the northeastern desert. In the Ennedi Massif, wind and water have carved sandstone into canyons, cliffs and natural arches, and thousands of pictures are painted and carved on the rocks. Nearby, the Lakes of Ounianga are 18 lakes in the middle of the Sahara, fed by water from under the ground.

N'Djamena lies at the confluence of the Logone and the Chari; founded in the early 20th century, it has grown fast, and Britannica describes urban life in Chad as almost restricted to the capital, with about a quarter of people counted as urban. Sarh, Moundou and Abéché are the other major towns.

Chad has two UNESCO World Heritage Sites, both in the northeast. The Lakes of Ounianga (2012) are 18 interconnected lakes in two groups 40 km apart, fed by groundwater in a hyperarid basin that gets less than 2 mm of rain a year. Lake Yoan is 27 m deep and so salty it supports only algae and microorganisms, while floating reeds cover almost half the surface of the 14 Ounianga Serir lakes. The Ennedi Massif (2016) is a sandstone plateau eroded into canyons, arches and pinnacles, with permanent water in its largest canyons and one of the largest groups of rock art in the Sahara.

Lake Chad is a big, shallow lake.

Long ago, it was much, much bigger. Two rivers bring water to it. In the north it almost never rains. In the south, rain falls for a few months each year.

Lake Chad sits on Chad's western border, 281 meters above sea level. Long ago it was a giant lake that scientists call Mega-Chad. In the 1970s and early 1980s, long droughts shrank it, and by the early 2000s it usually covered about 1,500 square kilometers. Its water comes mostly from the Chari and Logone rivers.

Chad has three climate zones. The south gets 800 to 1,200 millimeters of rain from May to October. The middle, called the Sahel, gets less. In the desert north, less than 25 millimeters falls in a year. The highest peak, Emi Koussi, rises in the volcanic Tibesti Mountains of the north.

Lake Chad, at 281 m, is a remnant of a far larger lake. In the early Holocene, possibly until about 7,000 years ago, Mega-Chad stood about 55 m higher, covered some 336,700 km² and overflowed toward the Benue River and the Atlantic. Fed mainly by the Chari (about 1,200 km long) and the Logone, the lake rises and falls with their flow, rainfall, evaporation and seepage. Sahel droughts in the 1970s and early 1980s cut it to about 2,600 km² by 1985, and in the early 21st century it typically covered about 1,500 km².

The basin is rimmed by the volcanic Tibesti Massif, whose highest point Britannica gives as Mount Koussi (Emi Koussi) at 3,415 m, the sandstone Ennedi Plateau, the Ouaddaï uplands and the Oubangui Plateau. Climate runs from wet and dry tropical in the south (800 to 1,200 mm, May to October) through the semiarid Sahel (300 to 800 mm, June to September) to the hot arid north, where Largeau averages under 25 mm a year. At N'Djamena, daytime temperatures average more than 38 °C from March to June.

Elephants live in Chad.

So do giraffes, lions and hippos. They live in the green, grassy south. Lots of fish swim in the rivers and the lake.

The tall grasses and big marshes of southern Chad are full of wildlife. Elephants, hippos, giraffes, warthogs, antelopes, lions, leopards and cheetahs live there, with many kinds of birds and reptiles. Chad's rivers and Lake Chad are some of the richest in fish in all of Africa.

Zakouma National Park in the southeast covers more than 3,000 square kilometers. The government, local communities and a conservation group called African Parks look after it together, and its elephant herds have grown by about 40 percent since 2010. Half of all Kordofan giraffes, a kind of giraffe, live in Zakouma.

Britannica describes the savanna zone's tall grasses and extensive marshes as rich in wildlife: elephants, hippopotamuses, rhinoceroses, warthogs, giraffes, antelopes, lions, leopards and cheetahs, with a wide range of birds and reptiles. The rivers and the lake rank among the richest in fish of all African waters, and about half the catch is salted and dried for export.

Zakouma National Park (more than 3,054 km²) lies at the heart of the Greater Zakouma Ecosystem, a landscape of about 28,000 km² with seasonal migrations, permanent rivers and floodplains. The government of Chad has managed it in partnership with the conservation group African Parks since 2010; African Parks reports that the park's elephant population has grown by about 40 percent since then and that it holds half of the world's Kordofan giraffes.

About 21 million people live in Chad.

People there speak more than 100 languages. Many families grow millet, sorghum and peanuts. In the desert, some people travel with their camels.

Chad is home to many peoples, and more than 100 languages and dialects are spoken there. Arabic and French are the official languages, and the national radio also broadcasts in languages such as Sara Madjingay, Tuburi and Mundang.

Ways of life change with the land. In the rainy south, farmers grow sorghum, rice, peanuts, millet and cassava. In the middle, some families farm while others move their cattle to find grass and water. In the desert north, some people live as nomads with herds of camels, and in the Tibesti Mountains small plots of millet, tomatoes and peppers grow, often in the shade of date palms.

Britannica calls Chad's population a tapestry of languages, peoples and religions, remarkable even by African standards: more than 100 languages and dialects, in about 12 groupings, from the Sara-Bongo-Bagirmi languages of the south to the Kanembu-Zaghawa languages of northern nomads and Maba around Abéché. A simplified Arabic is used in towns and markets, and French in education. About half the population is Sunni Muslim, mostly in the north and east, and about two-fifths is Christian; more than two-fifths of people are under 15.

Land use follows the three climate zones. In the south, farmers grow rice and sorghum on clay soils and peanuts and millet on sandier ground, and receding floods leave hollows called yaere for a second, dry-season sorghum crop. The Sahel mixes settled farmers with herders whose cattle migrate for pasture and water. In the arid north, nomads keep camels, and in the Tibesti small plots of millet, tomatoes and peppers are watered from springs and shallow wells.