Chad is a north-south state with its capital on the wetter edge

Chad is stretched so far that climate helps draw its politics. The Sahara lies in the north, the Sahel in the middle, savanna in the south. The capital does not stand at the middle of that line. It stands where there is more water.

N'Djamena lies where the Chari and the Logone meet, close to Cameroon, on the southern side of the slope from wet to dry. The area is 1,284,000 square kilometres, the population 21,003,705. The state carries the name of a lake that lies to the west and is shared with neighbours. Most of the territory is not that lake. It is desert, Sahel and a savanna the colonial state could reach more easily than the mountains in the north.

Desert, Sahel, savanna

The north is Sahara. Tibesti and Ennedi are mountains of stone in a wide country of sand and gravel, thinly inhabited by Tubu and by Arab herders. The middle is Sahel, where the rain stays uncertain and the herd is the insurance. The south is wetter and more agricultural, the old cotton country of the French colony, home of the Sara and of other peoples. These bands are not only vegetation zones in a textbook. They are different ways of getting through a year.

The colonial capital was called Fort-Lamy. That the city stands on the river, and not in the wide area, says which part of the country the administration could reach. A capital in the Tibesti would not have supplied the cotton country, and would itself have been hard to supply. N'Djamena is a choice for water. The state's claim still runs north, to the border with Libya, into country the capital enters only at a cost.

The lake that gives the country its name

Lake Chad lies west of the capital region. It is shallow, and its shore has shifted. It is shared with Cameroon, Niger and Nigeria. The name of the state comes from this water. The political history comes rather from the axis between north and south, and from the question of who holds N'Djamena. To make the lake the whole story would be a pretty picture and a bad map. To leave it out would be just as wrong, because fishers, herds and neighbours depend on its basin.

The neighbours show the corridor. Libya lies to the north, Sudan to the east, the Central African Republic to the south, Cameroon, Nigeria and Niger to the west. Chad lies between the Maghreb and equatorial Africa, between Sudan and the states that face the Atlantic. Wars next door do not stay next door. People fleeing, armed groups and trade routes cross borders that are clear on the map and porous on the track. The position is why outside powers rarely overlook this country for long.

The capital stands where the water reaches. The state also claims the dryness.

— TerraTally · Countries desk

Arabic and French over older languages

The constitution names Arabic and French as official languages. Arabic here is both a written standard and a Chadian Arabic that serves as a lingua franca in the north and the centre. French is the language of a large part of the southern school and of the inherited administration. Sara, Tubu, Kanembu and other languages remain underneath. The official pair describes the state. It does not describe every house. The currency is the Central African CFA franc. It ties Chad to an order that several states share.

Politics in Chad has often been read as north against south, herding against farming, a Muslim north against a Christian and animist south. The lines overlap, and they turn false as soon as they are treated as a destiny. What is useful is the rainfall profile and the question of who controls the capital. What is useless is the idea that the profile is already the whole constitution. The CFA franc says nothing about whether, in a given prefecture, the state is the one collecting, or someone else. The map of moisture remains the most honest introduction to this country.

Chad is large enough that drought and rain are different political countries. From the wetter edge, N'Djamena governs a territory that grows drier toward the north.