N'DJAMÉNA LETTER:Chad has one of the best-equipped armies in sub-Saharan Africa – but it will not feed its people, writes MARY BOLAND
THE “DEAD Heart of Africa”, as Chad is sometimes called, has begun beating again, fresh blood pumping through it in the form of recently discovered oil. New asphalt roads criss-cross the dusty capital, N’Djaména, where even the locals admit to losing their way on unfamiliar streets as their once-green city cedes more space daily to the government’s infrastructure programme.
But apart from roads – built at great cost to the Chadian environment, with some of N’Djaména’s oldest trees ripped out – this nation’s newly revived economy is showing few outward signs of progress. You don’t have to look far in the sun-baked sprawl, punctuated by roundabouts and clogged with motorcyclists dodging overloaded buses and trucks, to witness desperate poverty.
Shoeless children in rags, some as young as three, beg for food and money at the windows of cars stopped at traffic lights. The severely disabled crawl, unaided and hardly clothed, in dust and gravel as traffic speeds perilously close by. In Bongor, a town south of N’Djaména, children in torn western T-shirts line up at a roadside cafe and wait for customers to pass them the leftover bones from chicken barbecued in a rusty half barrel. Across the country, emaciated adults and children can be seen rummaging for food in bins.
For a country rich in gold, uranium and now oil, Chad hides its wealth well. Nearly 80 per cent of women and 66 per cent of men cannot read or write. In 2009, only 31 per cent of girls and 41 per cent of boys were enrolled at primary school.
As the personal wealth of President Idriss Déby Itno and members of his administration manifestly grows, the country’s population remains among the world’s poorest. The 2010 United Nations Human Development Index ranked Chad near the bottom, 163rd out of 169 nations.
On a parcel of arid land off the main road in Walia, in N’Djaména’s ninth arrondissement, 31 tents have been hastily pitched along a bank of the muddy Chari river, where women are washing clothes and children are bathing in the 45 degree heat.
Until last September, Djibdaou Tebetchang (34), a captain in the Chadian army, his wife Bintou Josephine (31) and their 10 children lived in a house in a quartier on the opposite side of the street. Today the couple and six of their children are crammed into rudimentary accommodation here, alongside a few latrines and a shared outdoor pump.
In March last year, an official from the planning ministry visited their old neighbourhood and announced to locals that they would soon have to move on.
“They told us a Chinese company was coming to knock everything down and build something – I’m not sure what,” says Tebetchang, sitting on a dirty mattress on the floor, the couple’s 11th child, a six-day-old daughter, sleeping soundly beside him. A large wooden dresser filled with saucepans, jars and papers sits incongruously in the middle of the tent, serving both to keep it upright and as a divider to create a bedroom.
There was a plan to raze the area within a year, he says, and a promise to rehouse everyone in Toukoura, south of here, under a law that allows the authorities to take over properties to make way for state construction projects.
As it turned out, nature did the work for them. In September, heavy rains led to flooding that demolished the neighbourhood, destroying 4,500 homes, washing away agricultural plots, flattening schools, and drowning at least six people. With her husband on a posting in the eastern city of Abeché – and unreachable by phone – a pregnant Josephine gathered what she could and moved her children to the roadside in search of shelter. While five of the children were housed with extended family, the makeshift tent was the best she could do for the rest of the family.
“Nearly everything was destroyed. The flood level reached two metres,” she says, reaching her arms up to illustrate the wall of water that crushed their home. Her approach to hardship is matter-of-fact. “What could I do? I had no choice but to move everyone.” Impatient that construction has not yet begun at the Toukoura site – and frustrated at the absence of government help – Tebetchang and some neighbours have set up a committee to press for progress. “The only thing the state did for us was set up these tents – and even they are a donation from Saudi Arabia,” he points out. Various charities made donations, he says, but many of the goods went astray.
Corruption, rife in Chad, has taken a toll on the community. “We received some things – bags of rice, soap, and help from Unicef on installing the latrines – but nothing close to the amount of stuff that arrived for us.” Last year Transparency International ranked Chad the eighth most corrupt state in the world.
The bulk of the state’s oil revenues, which began flowing in 2003 and had topped $1.2 billion (€830 million) by 2007, was initially supposed to be invested in alleviating poverty. The World Bank and European Union financed pipeline construction in return for guarantees that the money be placed in a Citibank account in London and spent on development. But by 2006, Déby Itno, confronted by growing armed opposition that had Sudanese support, demanded use of the money to buy arms.
When the World Bank responded by suspending aid programmes and freezing oil revenues, the president dealt with the oil companies directly, removing international controls on the use of the funds. By 2009, Chad’s military spending had risen to $315 million, from $14 million in 2000. Today it has one of the best-equipped armies in sub-Saharan Africa, but it will not feed its people.
The International Crisis Group, an NGO working to prevent conflict, describes the showdown as “the Chadian David’s victory against the international Goliaths”. Its victims, it says, are the Chadian people, “condemned to long-term poverty”.