Chad: A Country in Crisis

Abstract

If there is a single nation in Africa that has gone abruptly from the most brilliant of prospects for the next quarter century to the darkest, it is Chad. Despite the start of oil production in 2003, an investment of $3.7 billion by a consortium of foreign oil companies headed by ExxonMobil, and the construction of an oil pipeline bankrolled, in large part, by the World Bank, Chad remains the world’s fifth poorest country. Some 80 percent of the population lives below the global poverty line, while the nation’s per capita income is less than $1,500 a year. But perhaps most disturbing for the next quarter century in one of the nations that could be an anchor of West Africa is the rampant corruption that has stymied every effort at development. Tied with Guinea and Sudan as the world’s sixth most corrupt country by Transparency International, the World Bank froze its funding of the oil pipeline project when the government reneged on its pledges to devote 80 percent of the revenue to P•RTFOLIO