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People
Cultural Demography:
Ethnicity in Chad includes: Sara, Arab, Mayo-Kebbi, Kanem-Bornou, Ouaddai, Hadjarai, Tandjile, Gorane, Fitri-Batha, Ngambaye, Goulaye, Massa, Moundang, Moussei, Zaghawa, Boulala, Mbaye, Baguirmi, Fulbe, Kotoko (Muslim), Maba, and Toubou.
Religions in Chad include Muslims at about 50 percent of the population, Christian at about 25 percent of the population, and those holding indigenous beliefs (mostly animism) at about 25 percent.
Languages in Chad include the official languages of French and Arabic, Sara and Sango in the south, in addition to more than 100 different languages and dialects.
Culture and Social Structure
Chad is divided culturally into two parts. In the desert north, Arab traders have over the centuries settled and created a Muslim enclave. In the more arable south people are of African descent, forming more than 200 ethnic groups. Southerners are animist, Christian or religiously syncretic and live predominantly either an agrarian or pastoral life. In contrast, northerners are predominantly traders or new industrialists. This north-south divide has been the most significant source of conflict in the country since independence.
Through their long religious and commercial relationships with Sudan and Egypt, many of the peoples in Chad's eastern and central regions have become more or less Arabized (specifically, speaking Arabic and engaging in many other Arab cultural practices). Chad's southern peoples took more readily to European culture during the French colonial period, further galvanizing the north-south divide. It is not only a divide of religion, ethnicity, race and language. It is a divide in labor as well. Northerners have historically been predominantly goat herders while southerners have been predominantly farmers.
In Chad language and ethnicity are not the same. Ethnic groups are, in fact, largely a product of European intervention. The European intervention deeply divided once more homogenous groups of people. They also installed a chief system in place of existing systems of local governance, appointing leaders who had hitherto little legitimacy with the people of the community.
In general, the French favored southerners over northerners and Arab countries favored the northerners over the southerners. Yet, the sub-regional divisions were exacerbated almost as much as the north-south religious and cultural divide. Rather than creating syncretic institutions marrying the new and old systems of governance, the Europeans virtually destroyed southern institutions in favor of uniform chiefdoms.
There is reason to believe that the failure of the European powers to root new leadership institutions in culturally-bound norms has persisted today to such a degree as to exacerbate already grievous problems of transparency, accountability and democratic processes. Moreover, the deep ethnic cleavages that challenge state attempts at fostering a united Chadian nationalism are largely resulting from social structures that evolved during the colonial period.
There are a variety of relationships that bind people in this country of plural social structures. In the north most people identify with the kashimbet, or household. In the south, clan identities are equally strong. Because Chad is mostly agrarian, social structure is also closely related to land production. Since this is divided into three region along north-central-south lines, so too are social structures in Chadian society.
Human Development
The World Bank considers Chad to be one of the world's poorest countries. Meanwhile, according to recent estimates, the population of Chad has a life expectancy at birth of 48.33 years of age ( 47.28 years for males and 49.43 years for females). Chad has an infant mortality rate of 100 deaths per 1,000 live births.
HIV/AIDS is a growing problem in Chad with 4.8 percent of the adult population infected. The 18,000 people who have died of the disease over the past decade have left over 70,000 orphans.
The risk of other infectious diseases in this country is very high. Food or waterborne diseases include bacterial and protozoal diarrhea, hepatitis A, and typhoid fever. Vectorborne diseases include malaria; water contact diseases include schistosomiasis; respiratory diseases include meningococcal meningitis; animal contact diseasesinclude rabies. Note that seven percent of GDP is spent on health expenditures in this country.
In terms of literacy, 25.7 percent of the population, age 15 and over, can read and write, however, that is an average rate which belies the vast difference between genders. Among men, the literacy rate is 40.8 percent while among women, it is 12.8 percent. Note that 3.2 percent of GDP is spent on educational expenditures in this country.
One notable indicator used to measure a country's quality of life is the Human Development Index (HDI), which is compiled annually since 1990 by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The HDI is a composite of several indicators, which measure a country's achievements in three main areas of human development: longevity, knowledge and education, as well as economic standard of living. In a ranking of 169 countries and territories, the HDI placed Chad in the low human development category, near the bottom of the ranking, at 163rd place.
Note: Although the concept of human development is complicated and cannot be properly captured by values and indices, the HDI, which is calculated and updated annually, offers a wide-ranging assessment of human development in certain countries, not based solely upon traditional economic and financial indicators.
Written by Dr. Denise Youngblood Coleman, Editor in Chief, www.countrywatch.com; see Bibliography for list of research sources.
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