User:NafisehSalehi2019/sandbox

Groundwater in Chad
With a history of agriculture, fishing and trading dating back thousands of years, Chad became independent from French colonisation in 1960. Civil war and military unrest occurred sporadically from then until the current president took office in 1990. For at least two decades, Chad has been significantly affected by the arrival of refugees from neighbouring countries, including Darfur in Sudan and the Central African Republic, and by people internally displaced by unrest within Chad. Chad is also involved in international anti-terrorism efforts to tackle Boko Haram and Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb.

Most of Chad’s population depends on subsistence arable and livestock agriculture. Most of the population lives in the more humid south; the central and northern parts of the country are much drier and support only a sparse population. Cotton used to dominate industry and export earnings, and remains a primary export, but an oil industry has developed since 2000, with pipelines carrying oil exports to the Atlantic coast. GDP grew from 2003 to 2014, but global oil price falls led to recession in 2016. Chad also has gold and uranium deposits, but development of these is still very limited.

Rainfall is highly variable both spatially and temporally across the country. Lake Chad is the major surface water resource, shared with neighbouring nations. Droughts in the 1970s and 80, combined with anthropogenic activity, reduced the area of Lake Chad to record low levels, placed huge stress on water resources, and increased dependence on groundwater. Most rural areas of Chad depend on groundwater for potable water supplies and often for livestock, and in the north, for small-scale irrigation, and groundwater is also an important resource in many cities.