The lightning-advance of the Rapid Support Forces into North Darfur in late April 2025 triggered yet another exodus across the dry wadi that demarcates Chad from Sudan. By 13 May the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimated that more than 1.32 million Sudanese had reached Chadian soil since the conflict reignited in April 2023, with a sudden spike of 20 000 arrivals recorded in the fortnight preceding this analysis. The small Sahelian republic, itself home to 17 million citizens and encircled by an arch of fragile neighbours, now hosts Africa’s fastest-growing displacement crisis.
Chad’s predicament is paradoxical. On one hand, it remains among the world’s least-developed economies, ranked 190th on the Human Development Index and classified as “mostly unfree” in the 2025 Index of Economic Freedom. On the other, the country is navigating a rare window of macro-economic opportunity as high global oil prices, a modest fiscal surplus and an International Monetary Fund programme anchored in debt restructuring converge to underpin medium-term growth projections of 5.3 percent. Reconciling the fiscal demands of a rapidly expanding humanitarian operation with the imperatives of structural reform and political stabilisation has therefore become a defining test for N’Djamena and its external partners.
The Humanitarian Dimension: Scale, Vulnerability and Response
UNHCR field assessments at the Tiné and Adré crossing points show that 87 percent of new Sudanese arrivals are women and children, many exhibiting acute malnutrition and conflict-related trauma. Witness testimonies collected by independent media on 12 May describe systematic looting, gender-based violence and forced displacement perpetrated in Darfur’s urban peripheries, incidents that the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has warned may amount to war crimes.
Humanitarian actors face at least four operational constraints. First, the remote Chadian-Sudanese border is accessible only via soft-sand routes that become impassable after the June rains. Second, the refugee-hosting provinces of Ouaddaï and Wadi Fira have pre-existing pockets of food insecurity classified IPC Phase 3 or worse. Third, the acute funding gap—currently US $409 million against needs of US $972 million—has forced agencies to prioritise emergency shelter and water, leaving critical protection services under-resourced. Finally, insecurity along trans-Sahelian corridors complicates convoy movements; in January a small armed group attempted to breach the presidential compound in N’Djamena, prompting temporary restrictions on military escorts that humanitarian organisations rely upon.
Health Systems under Strain: From Polio to Trauma Care
Chad’s public health infrastructure, already stretched by periodic cholera and measles outbreaks, now confronts a twin challenge: mass casualty management for conflict-wounded refugees and the containment of a circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2 (cVDPV2) outbreak in the Lake Chad Basin. In mid-April ministers of health from Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Niger and Nigeria launched a synchronised vaccination campaign targeting 83 million children under five. Surveillance data released on 25 April indicate 210 detections of cVDPV2 across the four most-affected countries, 140 resulting in paralysis, illustrating the persistent epidemiological threat.
Simultaneously, the national Cluster Santé reports that twenty-seven international and domestic partners provided health services in eastern Chad between January and March 2025, yet only six facilities met the Inter-Agency Emergency Health Kit standard for obstetric care. The supply chain for essential trauma commodities remains fragile: Médecins Sans Frontières exhausted its stocks of external fixators at the Adré stabilisation centre within ten days of the late-April influx, while the International Committee of the Red Cross warns of a backlog for cross-border medical evacuations to Abeché Regional Hospital.
Governance and the Rule-of-Law Agenda
Beyond immediate humanitarian imperatives, Chad’s political transition continues to dominate diplomatic conversations. The country formally ended its three-year transitional period in May 2024 with the election of General Mahamat Idriss Déby as president, a process contested by opposition figures but nonetheless endorsed by the Constitutional Council. The government’s Programme d’Appui à la Promotion de la Paix et de l’État de droit (PAPPE) completed its first phase in May 2025, focusing on capacity-building for judicial and anti-corruption institutions.
Concurrently Chad assumed the rotating presidency of the African Organisation for the Harmonisation of Business Law (OHADA) in February 2025. OHADA’s Permanent Secretary highlighted N’Djamena’s commitment to modernise its commercial code and arbitration framework—reforms that diplomats view as pivotal to reducing regulatory risk for private investors. These governance initiatives are not merely technocratic; they form part of a broader strategy to reposition Chad as a credible interlocutor for multilateral lenders and extractive-sector partners.
Economic Ambition amid Fiscal Pressures
Oil remains the backbone of Chad’s export earnings, yet the administration has signalled an intent to diversify. At the Forum International de Développement des Infrastructures du Tchad (FIDIT) in March 2025 the government unveiled a concessional financing pipeline for solar mini-grids, agri-logistics corridors and a dry-port facility in Moundou. The measures dovetail with IMF Article IV recommendations urging the authorities to ring-fence oil revenues in a revamped Stabilisation Fund while expanding social spending by one percent of non-oil GDP in 2025-26.
However, the refugee crisis directly undermines the fiscal arithmetic. Treasury projections leaked to local media in early May indicate that basic assistance for the 2025 refugee caseload could absorb the entire projected primary surplus of 1.1 percent of GDP. The government therefore depends heavily on external grants; yet Official Development Assistance fell by 8 percent in real terms in 2024 and pledges for 2025 remain 34 percent under target. The resulting shortfall has revived debate over sovereign-backed social bonds, a mechanism that some policymakers view as a stop-gap but which the IMF cautions could elevate debt-distress risks if poorly structured.
Security Externalities and Regional Diplomacy
The humanitarian-economic nexus cannot be disentangled from security dynamics. Reports from Tiné describe occasional cross-border incursions by armed groups scavenging livestock and fuel. The Chadian army, although battle-hardened, is operating at extended supply lines while simultaneously contributing troops to the G5 Sahel Joint Force. Western military advisers, reduced since France’s drawdown in 2023, now focus on intelligence fusion rather than direct kinetic support. Diplomatic envoys from the African Union, the Arab League and the European Union have urged all parties in Sudan to negotiate unhindered humanitarian corridors, yet ceasefire talks in Jeddah collapsed again on 11 May without agreement.
Chad’s own internal stability remains fragile. A small but persistent rebel presence operates from the Tibesti massif, and the January foiled attack on the presidential compound in N’Djamena underscored the risk of opportunistic violence amid political transition. The government’s calculus is therefore guided by a triad: preventing spill-over of Sudan’s conflict, securing borders against non-state actors and maintaining sufficient force posture in the north-west to deter insurgent resurgence.
International Engagement: Funding Architecture and Policy Coherence
Donor conferences in Geneva (February 2025) and Doha (April 2025) mobilised US $563 million for the Sudan regional refugee response, but only US $142 million was earmarked for Chad. Humanitarian agencies warn that without front-loading cash-based assistance by June, the lean-season nutrition profile could deteriorate rapidly. The World Food Programme’s market assessment indicates that sorghum prices in eastern Chad were already 27 percent above the five-year average in April due to supply-chain congestion, a differential likely to widen as rainfall disrupts road access.
Meanwhile, development financiers pursue parallel agendas. The African Development Bank is finalising a resilience window of US $120 million to extend electricity grids into refugee-hosting areas, a project forecast to add 0.4 percent to national GDP by 2029. The World Bank’s IDA-20 allocation for Chad includes a 24-million-dollar Second Governance Reform Grant that will be disbursed upon enactment of the Public Finance Management Bill currently before parliament. These instruments exemplify a shift toward the humanitarian-development-peace nexus, yet coordination gaps persist: only five of the twenty-seven health partners participate in the government’s budget support working group, limiting transparency on fiscal flows.
Prospects for Regional Stability
Sudan’s protracted conflict shows no sign of abating. The Rapid Support Forces retain control of lucrative gold-trading routes in North Darfur, while the Sudanese Armed Forces consolidate along the Nile corridor. Analysts at the International Crisis Group caution that a prolonged stalemate could normalise a quasi-stateless periphery driving ever larger refugee waves into neighbouring states. The capacity of Chad’s institutions—governing, fiscal and security—to absorb such shocks will therefore be a bellwether for Central Africa’s near-term trajectory.
In this context, the OHADA presidency offers Chad both symbolic and practical leverage. Should N’Djamena advance harmonised insolvency and arbitration reforms, it could stimulate cross-border investment confidence, potentially increasing non-oil FDI inflows by an estimated 0.8 percent of GDP. Yet governance deficits remain acute: the PAPPE evaluation highlights persistent shortfalls in judicial independence and anti-corruption enforcement, areas that international partners will scrutinise closely when considering budget-support packages.
Chad stands at a critical juncture where humanitarian response, economic reform and security management intersect. The arrival of more than a million Sudanese refugees within two years would test the resilience of any state, let alone one emerging from its own political transition and structurally dependent on hydrocarbon exports. Yet the picture is not uniformly bleak. Concurrent campaigns to eradicate polio, modernise commercial law and diversify infrastructure financing demonstrate a strategic, if fragile, commitment to long-term stability.
For diplomats and policymakers the policy implications are clear. First, a calibrated surge in humanitarian funding is required before the onset of the rains, with a parallel effort to integrate refugee needs into national service delivery rather than standalone encampments. Second, debt-neutral mechanisms—such as guarantees or blended-finance instruments—should anchor economic diversification to prevent reform back-sliding under humanitarian pressure. Third, regional diplomacy must elevate the protection of civilians in Darfur as an early-warning priority, with robust monitoring mandates tethered to border-stabilisation assistance for Chad.
Whether Chad transitions from crisis containment to sustainable development will hinge on the coherence of these simultaneous interventions. The coming months will thus provide an instructive case study in managing overlapping humanitarian, economic and security shocks within a single polity—an issue that is likely to recur elsewhere across an increasingly volatile Sahel.
