November 28 – Republic Day in Chad

November 28, 2020

Posted on November 28, 2020

Did you know that the nation of Chad has relatively untapped reserves of oil, uranium, and gold? It seems that it would be a rich nation, with all those (and more) resources, but actually it is one of the poorest and most corrupt countries in the world!

You can see that Chad is land-locked.

Today is NOT Chad’s Independence Day. That is on August 11, and it commemorates the African nation’s independence from France in 1960.

Today, instead, commemorates November 28, 1958, when Chad gained “autonomous status” and was able to set up a republican government. But the government has been run for the last 30 years by a former general who gained power by overthrowing the president he was supposed to serve. There is a lot of political instability, attempted coups, violence, and human rights violations.

One thing that might lead to some of the lack of unity is that Chad has a lot of different ethnic groups and languages. Most everybody speaks two or more languages – with one of them being one of the two official languages (Arabic or French) – and there are more than 100 different languages and even more named ethnic groups. The names of these various ethnic groups are not familiar to me: Sara, Kanembu, Masalit, Bidio, Dadjo, Tama, Tupuri, and many more!