Rural futures in focus: Chad

Chad is blessed with a rich history going back to the dawn of humanity and an astonishing diversity of landscapes, cultures and languages. But today, many of its people cannot prosper because of ongoing fragility and crises. We caught up with Rachel Senn, IFAD’s Country Director for Chad, to learn more about the way forward for rural people in this nation at the heart of Africa.

Chad faces multiple dimensions of fragility. It is extremely vulnerable to climate hazards and experiences chronic conflict along with security, food, nutrition and socioeconomic issues. Over a third of the population is undernourished and a similar proportion lives in extreme poverty.

About 76 per cent of people in Chad live in rural areas, where they rely on agriculture and livestock for both their food and livelihoods. Climate change is hitting this Sahel country hard: dry seasons are getting longer, so the Sahara is encroaching on potentially fertile agricultural land. Meanwhile the rains, when they come, are more extreme and can wash away crops in an instant. In July 2024, over a quarter-million hectares of crops were destroyed by floods. This is worsening rural poverty and food insecurity.

Chad has the potential to be an agricultural powerhouse. It has vast amounts of land that, with the right agricultural infrastructure and water management, can produce ample food. There is growing demand for produce and meat, so connections to markets and storage and processing facilities can ensure that farmers reduce post-harvest losses and receive good rates for the food they produce. In this way, they can move from subsistence to commercial farming and lift themselves out of poverty.

But for me, personally, the biggest opportunities I’ve seen lie in the incredible energy and resilience of Chad’s women. When I visited the country, I saw how their eyes glowed with laughter, joy and determination to contribute to the development of their rural communities and the wellbeing of their families.

IFAD’s Crisis Response Initiative (CRI) invested in small-scale production and storage infrastructure through our existing RePER project. CRI activities allow small-scale farmers to produce more food and process it for value addition, build water management infrastructure and restore degraded land to protect against climate change and ensure access to quality seeds and sustainable technologies.

Through the CRI, over 7,300 households are now sustainably managing 4,700 hectares of land, using dykes to channel water, ploughing in manure to restore soil fertility and growing diverse crops in market gardens.

On my recent visit to Chad, I met groups of women who are investing in market gardening with solar pumps to provide water, reduce drudgery and increase productivity. IFAD also trained them to process and preserve agricultural products such as meat and vegetables in a way that maintains their quality for consumers in nearby towns.

The production of dried okra quadrupled and meat processing capacity doubled, while the quality of the final product improved. With lower post-harvest losses, the women have found new buyers and made nutritious food available to their families through the dry season.

Better food storage is also increasing people’s resilience and food security. Women’s groups have set up cereal banks to safely store grain and, during the lean season this past year, families who participated in the project had enough food to eat and sell.

This is all having real impacts on people’s lives. Take Maimouna, a 41-year-old single mother of seven. After learning how to nourish and enrich the soil, she increased her harvest of wheat, millet and maize. She has now doubled or tripled her earnings in previous years, making enough to meet her family’s needs and even set aside savings.

First, it quickly became clear to us that it’s not just rural people who experience challenges due to fragility. Ironically, severe flooding in 2024 delayed the water management systems we were building: in a vicious cycle, climate change made it harder to create rural resilience in the first place. This is something we need to build into planning for rural development in challenging contexts.

Second, women’s associations were committed to rural development and ready to invest in their businesses, while microfinance institutions sometimes lacked the capacity to provide access to finance. In fragile contexts, therefore, we need to build not just the capacity and awareness of farmers as service users, but also that of service providers.

Third, the usual practice is to procure services and goods at the national level to ensure quality, but this can be a slow process, and we need to adapt quickly in fragile contexts. In Chad, we decided to procure locally instead. This meant we could get the equipment and services needed to set up cereal banks, irrigation infrastructure and food processing plants faster and make them directly available in the project areas.

Local procurement also strengthened local economies, encouraged local enterprise and created capacity and resources within communities that will benefit them long after the project is finished.

The image I had in my mind of the Sahel region was one of insecurity and extreme poverty, but when I arrived, this was quickly replaced by the songs and ululations of the rural women, always joyful in the fields, even under the intense heat. The optimism they radiate despite their challenges is a source of inspiration and motivation for me, and a call for IFAD and its partners to invest even more in these women – the true changemakers of our world.