The economic side of Chad - week 8 - Julie De Vreese

Hello everyone,

Here I am again for some more explanation on yet another country. This time we are finding ourselves in Chad, a country in the middle of Africa surrounded by Libya, Sudan, the Central African Republic, Cameroon, Nigeria and Niger. It is indeed a beautiful country as Melisa already mentioned in her blog.

As it is so burning hot here outside between the hours of 12 pm and 16 pm, we chose to stay inside and definitely out of the sun. We found a little terrace and as we sat down to relax for the next few hours, one of the natives saw we were tourists and asked us what we thought of the country so far. After a few minutes he told us that Chad had to thank cotton for everything they had now. We didn’t really understand so he explained to us that when France gave independence to Chad in 1960, the economy was not so good due to drought, geographic remoteness and lack of infrastructure. The economy was mostly based on agriculture, dominated by cotton. Close to 83% of the population worked in agriculture, and even as they tried to make some progress over the years, Chad remained one of the poorest countries in the world.

Chad is locked in by several other countries and has therefore no coast, it has no efficient transportation network and not enough natural resources to live from the export. The best place to be a farmer though is in the south, where there is enough rainfall to grow cotton and peanuts. The main thing they did in the agriculture, was ginning raw cotton into fiber for export to other countries, mostly France. Also spinning and weaving of the cotton, and producing oil from the seeds of the cotton to use for local consumption is an important activity. The prices for cotton had always been good, so the economy could be called somewhat stable, but in 1985 the prices fell quickly and the whole cotton industry nearly went cripple. That forced the country to do some major restructuring.

Luckily, they can also cultivate rice, potatoes and manioc. They go fishing in lake Chad, and herd sheep, goats, cattle, and a bit unusual for us …camels. Furthermore, Chad produces minerals such as Natron and Uranium. Now, Chad’s major trading partners are the United States, France, Cameroon and China.

see you next time

xXx Julie

Sources:
http://www.mongabay.com/reference/country_studies/chad/ECONOMY.html
http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/world/A0857236.html