Chad: Development Potential and Constraints

Abstract

Chad occupies 1.3 million square kilometers in Central Africa and has a population of 3.6 million. The population growth rate is about 2.1 percent annually and per capita gross national product (GNP) was an estimated US$80 in 1971. It lacks natural resources, social and economic infrastructure, and is burdened by high transport costs to the outside world. Its population is largely unschooled and untrained. Recent growth has been accompanied by widening income disparities between the small modern sector, containing the new urban elite and the rural masses, and between the north and the south. Accordingly, Chad's development efforts are to be concentrated on raising rural productivity to alleviate poverty, and more particularly on making full use of the underemployed labor force. Opportunities for productive employment in the small towns will remain modest at best. The most promising import substitution industries such as textiles and beverages have already been established, and Chad's incomes and markets are too limited to offer economic opportunities for the production of most commonly imported products. Livestock provides subsistence and cash income to nomadic and seminomadic livestock herders in the north and east. Cotton is Chad's most important export crop. The country produces medium and medium long fiber cotton which currently brings a high price on world markets, although the level of prices in the future will be sensitive to the volume marketed by the principal producers. The development constraints in development of Chad are deficiencies in human resources public finances and transportation, financial position of the government, high cost of transportation, and economic management. Chad also maintains close relations with common market countries, the principal sources foreign aid and technical assistance.