40 Fun Facts About Lake Chad

Dust from the dry bed of ancient Mega-Lake Chad drifts across an ocean to fertilise which rainforest?

The Amazon gets much of its mineral-rich dust from the Bodélé Depression in Chad, a bowl of dried lakebed that throws up dust storms about 100 days a year.

Kuri cattle, a giant-horned breed found only around Lake Chad, are famous for which unusual skill?

Swimming comes naturally to Kuri cattle, which spend much of their time in the lake. Herders believe the bulbous, hollow horns help them float.

Which Norwegian adventurer hired boatbuilders from Lake Chad to build Ra, his reed boat for crossing the Atlantic?

Thor Heyerdahl modelled Ra on ancient Egyptian drawings and took a Chadian, Abdullah Djibrine, in his crew. The boat sagged and broke apart before it could reach the Caribbean.

Between the 1960s and the 1980s, the open water of Lake Chad shrank by roughly what share?

About 90% of the open water vanished, falling from roughly 25,000 square kilometres to 2,000. Rainfall has partly recovered since, and the lake is no longer thought to be shrinking.

Which insurgent group, founded in north-eastern Nigeria, has displaced millions of people around Lake Chad?

Boko Haram grew out of a sect founded in the city of Maiduguri in 2002. Its fighters later became active in every country on the lake's shores.

Lake Chad lies where Chad, Niger and Nigeria meet which fourth country?

Cameroon completes the set of four. In 1964 the lakeside states set up a joint commission to manage the water they share.

With no outlet to the sea, Lake Chad is classed as which kind of lake?

Freshwater it stays, because the lake slowly seeps underground toward a lower basin to the north-east, carrying away the salts that would otherwise build up.

The islanders of Lake Chad build fishing boats and movable huts from which tall reed?

Papyrus huts are light enough to be carried to higher ground when the lake rises. The same plant dominates the wetlands along the southern shore.

Which desert lies directly north of Lake Chad and once held the lake's far larger ancestor?

The Sahara dried out over the last few thousand years, and the giant lake that once reached deep into it retreated south to the present shoreline.

Roughly how deep is Lake Chad on average?

About 1.5 metres is typical across the main basins, so even a small drop in level exposes huge stretches of lakebed.

Which river, rising in the Central African Republic, supplies most of the water that enters Lake Chad?

The Chari runs about 1,400 kilometres to the lake, so rain falling on distant southern highlands matters more to the water level than local showers do.

Which capital city, built where the two main feeder rivers of Lake Chad meet, hosts the Lake Chad Basin Commission?

N'Djamena houses the commission's secretariat, and the 1964 convention that created the body was signed in the same city.

A drought that began in the late 1960s across which African belt made Lake Chad shrink dramatically?

The Sahel drought did its worst damage in 1972 and 1984, when the rains failed along the whole strip of dry grassland that crosses the continent.

Alongside drought, the diversion of river water for which purpose is chiefly blamed for shrinking Lake Chad?

Irrigation withdrawals roughly quadrupled between 1983 and 1994, drawing off river water just as years of drought had already cut the flow.

The Transaqua plan would refill Lake Chad with a 2,400-kilometre canal carrying water from which river's basin?

The Congo scheme would dam several northern tributaries and carry the water along a navigable canal, generating hydroelectricity on the way.

In which Jules Verne novel do three British travellers cross Lake Chad on a flight from Zanzibar to Senegal?

Five Weeks in a Balloon came out in 1863 and was an instant hit, making Verne financially independent. Its route also passes over Timbuktu.

Which giant predatory fish, infamous as an invader of Lake Victoria, is a prized native catch in Lake Chad?

Nile perch is native here, unlike in East Africa, but dams on the feeder rivers have disrupted fish migration and sharply cut its numbers.

Which state, based around Lake Chad for roughly a thousand years, grew rich on desert caravan trade?

Kanem–Bornu lasted from about the 9th century to the end of the 19th, shifting its heartland from the north-east of the lake to the west along the way.

Which Scottish naval officer reached Lake Chad in 1823 alongside Dixon Denham and Walter Oudney?

Hugh Clapperton and his companions were the first Europeans known to see the lake, after travelling south from Tripoli. The three quarrelled bitterly over who led the mission.

From which power did the rulers around Lake Chad import firearms and military trainers in the late 1500s?

The Ottoman Empire supplied muskets, and Turkish advisers drilled the gunmen who used them, giving the lakeside kings military dominance over the region.

Around Lake Chad, people harvest dihé, dried cakes of which alga now sold worldwide as a health supplement?

Spirulina cakes from the lake were described by a scientist in 1940, decades before the alga became a fashionable food. It is gathered from small ponds near the shore.

Which mineral salt, used by ancient Egyptians to dry mummies, is dug from pans beside Lake Chad?

Natron is cut into blocks on the north-east shore and has long been ferried across the lake to markets in Nigeria.

More than a million of which wading bird, named for the males' showy collar, can gather on Lake Chad?

Ruff flocks winter here after breeding across northern Europe and Asia, and the lake is listed as an Important Bird Area.

Farmers grow maize and rice on reclaimed lakebed around Lake Chad in fields known by which Dutch name?

Polders on the exposed lakebed are fertile enough to farm without fertiliser, but the new land has not made up for the losses to fishing and herding.

Which North African country, with no shore on Lake Chad, joined the Lake Chad Basin Commission in 2008?

Libya followed the Central African Republic, which had joined the four lakeside founders in 1996. The commission manages the shared water and promotes security in the region.

Which judicial body ruled in 2002 on a disputed border running from Lake Chad to the sea?

The International Court of Justice fixed the line through the lake itself and told Nigeria to withdraw its officials and forces from lake territory that belonged to its neighbour.

Which ancient culture south of Lake Chad, known for bronze and terracotta figures, do the Kotoko claim as ancestors?

The Sao worked bronze, copper and iron and left funerary urns among their finds. They faded as a separate culture in the 16th century.

Which domesticated cereal turned up charred among wild grasses at 3,000-year-old sites near Lake Chad?

Pearl millet from the area dates to about 1200–1000 BC, when lakeside herders of the Gajiganna culture were settling into permanent hamlets.

Which swamp-dwelling antelope, with long splayed hooves suited to boggy ground, lives in the wetlands of Lake Chad?

The sitatunga shares these marshes with hippos and kob, though hunting has wiped out most of the large mammals that once lived around the lake.

Which tree product, used to stabilise soft drinks and sweets, is collected in the woodlands around Lake Chad?

Gum arabic is tapped from acacia trees, but shrinking woodland and booming cattle herds around the lake have cut the harvest.

Although its rains fall in summer, Lake Chad usually reaches its highest level around which month?

December is about when the lake peaks, months after the summer rains, because the flood coming down its feeder rivers only arrives in October and November.

Which German explorer, whose 1850s travels ranged from Lake Chad to Timbuktu, published a 3,500-page account of them?

Heinrich Barth covered more than 12,000 miles and learned African languages as he went, which let him record the cultures he met in unusual detail.

Which Sudanese warlord seized the lands around Lake Chad in 1893, only to be killed by French troops in 1900?

Rabih az-Zubayr, a slave trader turned empire-builder, died at the battle of Kousséri, a fight that also cost the French commander his life.

Which river, the main tributary of the chief feeder of Lake Chad, joins that river at Chad's capital?

The Logone also marks part of Chad's south-western border, and swamps and wetlands line much of its course.

Which river flows into Lake Chad after marking part of the border between Niger and Nigeria?

The Yobe supplies less than 2.5% of the inflow, and upstream dams such as Tiga in Kano State have raised concern about what remains.

Which island-dwelling people of Lake Chad are known by a name meaning 'people of the reeds'?

The Buduma were given the name by their neighbours and call themselves Yedina. Their screen of water and reeds once shielded them after raids on nearby herds.

Which 8,000-year-old dugout, Africa's oldest known boat, was found in 1987 in the Nigerian part of the Lake Chad basin?

The Dufuna canoe was discovered by a herdsman and is the second-oldest boat known anywhere in the world.

The name of Lake Chad, later borrowed by a whole country, comes from the word for 'lake' in which language?

Kanuri speakers have lived beside the lake for more than a thousand years, so their everyday word for a body of water stuck as its name.

Chad's capital, a river port near Lake Chad, went by which French colonial name until 1973?

Fort-Lamy honoured a French army officer who had been killed in a battle shortly before the town was founded.

When ancient Mega-Lake Chad overflowed, its water escaped down the Mayo Kébbi into which tributary of the Niger?

The Benue link explains a puzzle: African manatees live in the lake's feeder rivers, though they are otherwise found only in waters connected to the Atlantic.