Lake Chad countries work together on early warnings

On October 28, 2026, a new five-year project was launched in N'Djamena, the capital of Chad, to help the countries around Lake Chad prepare for floods and droughts. Five countries are taking part: Cameroon, Chad, Niger, Nigeria and the Central African Republic. The project is run by the Lake Chad Basin Commission together with the World Meteorological Organization, or WMO, and a network called the Global Water Partnership Central Africa. Its main aim is to warn communities at risk earlier, so that people have more time to act.

Lake Chad lies in the Sahel, a semi-dry strip of land south of the Sahara, where Chad, Cameroon, Niger and Nigeria meet. The lake gets most of its water from rivers, mainly the Chari, which flows in from the south. Because the rains in the region change a lot from year to year, the lake is very sensitive to drought. In 2017, NASA reported that it covered less than a tenth of the area it had covered in the 1960s. Today, more than 50 million people live in the wider Lake Chad Basin, including many farmers, herders and fishers whose work depends on its water. To manage this shared water, Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria set up the Lake Chad Basin Commission in 1964, and the Central African Republic and Libya joined later.