N'Djamena Today: Chad Between Political Instability and…

At the confluence of the Chari and Logone rivers, N'Djamena faces the Cameroon city of Kousséri across the water, in one of the rare cases in the world of two urban centers of different countries facing the same watercourse.

The Chadian capital preserves the National Museum of Chad, with artifacts from the Sao civilization that inhabited the Lake Chad region for over a millennium, and the Great Mosque that dominates the downtown.

Chad was governed for over thirty years by Idriss Déby, who died in April 2021 on the front while leading government troops against a rebel offensive coming from Libya.

Power passed to his son Mahamat Idriss Déby heading a military transition junta, in a path marked by the violent repression of October 2022 protests, when security forces killed dozens of protesters in N'Djamena, and the killing in February 2024 of the main opposition leader, Yaya Dillo, in disputed circumstances.

At the May 2024 presidential elections, the first after the transition, Mahamat Déby was elected amid accusations of fraud by opposition groups, while France ended its historic military cooperation in the country between 2024 and 2025.

Complicating the picture is Chad's position as the main escape route for over a million refugees arriving from neighboring Sudan, ravaged by civil war, as well as the persistent threat of the jihadist group Boko Haram in the western Lake Chad region.

In a more stable political context, N'Djamena would offer the National Museum with its Sao artifacts, the Great Mosque, and the vibrant markets of the center, while the entire country could showcase the Zakouma National Park, among the greatest successes in elephant conservation in Central Africa.

The consolidation of an authentically democratic political transition and the stabilization of the regional crisis linked to Sudan remain the prerequisites for Chad to open itself to more mature international tourism.