Donate for Chad
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Help for Chad
A country marked by conflict: In Chad, Help is committed to helping displaced families from Sudan and the Lake Chad region. We also promote income opportunities for young people and women through agricultural projects.
How is Help providing support in Chad?
Strengthening resilience and creating prospects
In Chad, which is already dry, supplying the population with water is a major challenge. The situation is exacerbated by the growing number of refugees from Sudan. We are providing aid on the ground and securing basic supplies for 20,000 refugees in the east of the country, for example by building wells and distributing food and household items. We have also built up an emergency stock of food to supply 3,000 people for three months in the event of a crisis.
In the province of Ouaddai in eastern Chad, we are focussing on improving the income of young people and women. We are supporting around 50 agricultural cooperatives there, in which a total of 1,500 small farmers grow, process and market vegetables together. True to our principle of helping people to help themselves, we equip the cooperatives with seeds, fertiliser, tools and equipment, provide the necessary infrastructure such as wells, pumps and storage facilities and train the smallholders in agricultural practices and financial literacy. The project participants can then earn enough money to provide for their families by selling their harvest.
Help is also improving people's livelihoods in the Lake Chad region by supporting cooperatives in the areas of agriculture, fishing and livestock farming. As violent displacement often occurs in the region, our local partner responds directly in such cases and provides emergency aid for those affected.
When building wells in Chad, we largely rely on solar wells and train water committees to maintain the wells. In 2013, we opened the largest solar-powered water system in Chad in the Am Nabak refugee camp in the east of the country and were even awarded the German Solar Prize for it.
A harvest to live on
Djamila lives in the province of Ouaddai in eastern Chad – a region where people suffer from scorching heat, droughts and famine. "Our harvests were very meagre, we often went to bed hungry. From the little we had, we tried to sell something at the market so that we would at least have a small income. But everyone offered the same vegetables at the same time. That ruins the prices," reports Djamila.
To enable people like Djamila to earn a living from their own resources, we have already strengthened the local infrastructure in the past by building wells. Together with our local project partner, we are currently distributing free seeds and tools to young farmers and providing them with training on how to grow vegetables efficiently and market their harvest.
Help trains us and supports us with the necessary gardening tools. We now cultivate large areas and earn better money.
Djamila, 27 years old
What is the situation like in Chad?
Conflicts, climate change & disasters
Despite its rich oil resources, Chad is one of the poorest countries in the world. Violent conflicts and the consequences of climate change characterise the country, which has also been experiencing an economic crisis since 2015. As a landlocked country that borders seven countries, Chad is predestined for refugee movements. Many people cross the country on their way to the north or seek refuge in Chad due to the uncertain situation in their home countries.
A large part of the population lives in extreme poverty and many people have no access to clean water, sanitation, food or medical care. Climate change is also leading to an increase in extreme weather events: In the fall of 2022, over 340,000 people in Chad were affected by severe flooding.
Since 2003, Sudanese refugees in eastern Chad have also been dependent on support from aid organizations such as Help. They fled the conflict in Darfur and are still unable to return to their home region. Since April 2023, there has been heavy fighting in Sudan, as a result of which hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced from their homes. Since then, around 609,000 Sudanese have fled to Chad.
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Q&A
Due to the consequences of climate change and the resulting poor harvests, 2.8 million people in the country are currently experiencing food insecurity.
Chad has become the epicentre of refugee movements due to the escalating conflict in its neighbouring country. The country is currently harbouring over 1.4 million refugees from Sudan. The entire infrastructure is under great strain.
The region around Lake Chad has been affected by a severe humanitarian crisis for years. Climate change-related droughts and heatwaves have led to the surface area of Lake Chad shrinking by 90 per cent since 1960. This is a catastrophe for the local population, as the majority of people are dependent on fishing and agriculture. Added to this is the violence of armed groups such as Boko Haram, which have been threatening the population for years. Many families have been forced to leave their home villages. There are now around 2.5 million displaced people and refugees living in the Lake Chad region. Despite the scale of the crisis, the situation at Lake Chad rarely makes it into the media - it is a forgotten crisis.
Our projects in Chad are supported by the following donors:
- Aktion Deutschland Hilft
- German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ)
Since 2012, we have been working closely with our partner organisation AHTD in Chad, which was founded by employees of the former local Help office and is now one of the largest Chadian aid organisations.