Lake Chad
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40 free Lake Chad trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Lake Chad is one of Africa's great geographical puzzles: a vast, shallow lake that has swelled and shrunk many times, and that tens of millions of people still rely on for water, food and farmland. These questions gather the best fun facts about Lake Chad: the countries that share it, the rivers that fill it, the reasons it shrank so sharply in the late twentieth century, the unusual cattle, birds and fish that live there, and the explorers, traders and kingdoms drawn to its shores. The quiz suits geography fans, students revising African geography and quiz hosts who want a ready-made round. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you learn something even when you guess wrong.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Dust from the dry bed of ancient Mega-Lake Chad drifts across an ocean to fertilise which rainforest?
The Amazon
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.
Q 02Kuri cattle, a giant-horned breed found only around Lake Chad, are famous for which unusual skill?
Swimming
Swimming comes naturally to Kuri cattle, which spend much of their time in the lake. Herders believe the bulbous, hollow horns help them float.
Q 03Which Norwegian adventurer hired boatbuilders from Lake Chad to build Ra, his reed boat for crossing the Atlantic?
Thor Heyerdahl
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.
Q 04Between the 1960s and the 1980s, the open water of Lake Chad shrank by roughly what share?
About 90%
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.
Q 05Which insurgent group, founded in north-eastern Nigeria, has displaced millions of people around Lake Chad?
Boko Haram
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.
Q 06Lake Chad lies where Chad, Niger and Nigeria meet which fourth country?
Cameroon
Cameroon completes the set of four. In 1964 the lakeside states set up a joint commission to manage the water they share.
Q 07With no outlet to the sea, Lake Chad is classed as which kind of lake?
Freshwater
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.
Q 08The islanders of Lake Chad build fishing boats and movable huts from which tall reed?
Papyrus
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.
Q 09Which desert lies directly north of Lake Chad and once held the lake's far larger ancestor?
Sahara
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.
Q 10Roughly how deep is Lake Chad on average?
About 1.5 metres
About 1.5 metres is typical across the main basins, so even a small drop in level exposes huge stretches of lakebed.
Q 11Which river, rising in the Central African Republic, supplies most of the water that enters Lake Chad?
Chari
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.
Q 12Which capital city, built where the two main feeder rivers of Lake Chad meet, hosts the Lake Chad Basin Commission?
N'Djamena
N'Djamena houses the commission's secretariat, and the 1964 convention that created the body was signed in the same city.
Q 13A drought that began in the late 1960s across which African belt made Lake Chad shrink dramatically?
The Sahel
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.
Q 21Around Lake Chad, people harvest dihé, dried cakes of which alga now sold worldwide as a health supplement?
Spirulina
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.
Q 22Which mineral salt, used by ancient Egyptians to dry mummies, is dug from pans beside Lake Chad?
Natron
Natron is cut into blocks on the north-east shore and has long been ferried across the lake to markets in Nigeria.
Q 23More than a million of which wading bird, named for the males' showy collar, can gather on Lake Chad?
Ruff
Ruff flocks winter here after breeding across northern Europe and Asia, and the lake is listed as an Important Bird Area.
Q 14Alongside drought, the diversion of river water for which purpose is chiefly blamed for shrinking Lake Chad?
Irrigation
Irrigation withdrawals roughly quadrupled between 1983 and 1994, drawing off river water just as years of drought had already cut the flow.
Q 15The Transaqua plan would refill Lake Chad with a 2,400-kilometre canal carrying water from which river's basin?
Congo
The Congo scheme would dam several northern tributaries and carry the water along a navigable canal, generating hydroelectricity on the way.
Q 16In which Jules Verne novel do three British travellers cross Lake Chad on a flight from Zanzibar to Senegal?
Five Weeks in a Balloon
Five Weeks in a Balloon came out in 1863 and was an instant hit, making Verne financially independent. Its route also passes over Timbuktu.
Q 17Which giant predatory fish, infamous as an invader of Lake Victoria, is a prized native catch in Lake Chad?
Nile perch
Nile perch is native here, unlike in East Africa, but dams on the feeder rivers have disrupted fish migration and sharply cut its numbers.
Q 18Which state, based around Lake Chad for roughly a thousand years, grew rich on desert caravan trade?
Kanem–Bornu
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.
Q 19Which Scottish naval officer reached Lake Chad in 1823 alongside Dixon Denham and Walter Oudney?
Hugh Clapperton
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.
Q 20From which power did the rulers around Lake Chad import firearms and military trainers in the late 1500s?
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire supplied muskets, and Turkish advisers drilled the gunmen who used them, giving the lakeside kings military dominance over the region.
Q 24Farmers grow maize and rice on reclaimed lakebed around Lake Chad in fields known by which Dutch name?
Polders
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.
Q 25Which North African country, with no shore on Lake Chad, joined the Lake Chad Basin Commission in 2008?
Libya
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.
Q 26Which judicial body ruled in 2002 on a disputed border running from Lake Chad to the sea?
International Court of Justice
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.
Q 27Which ancient culture south of Lake Chad, known for bronze and terracotta figures, do the Kotoko claim as ancestors?
Sao
The Sao worked bronze, copper and iron and left funerary urns among their finds. They faded as a separate culture in the 16th century.
Q 28Which domesticated cereal turned up charred among wild grasses at 3,000-year-old sites near Lake Chad?
Pearl millet
Pearl millet from the area dates to about 1200–1000 BC, when lakeside herders of the Gajiganna culture were settling into permanent hamlets.
Q 29Which swamp-dwelling antelope, with long splayed hooves suited to boggy ground, lives in the wetlands of Lake Chad?
Sitatunga
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.
Q 30Which tree product, used to stabilise soft drinks and sweets, is collected in the woodlands around Lake Chad?
Gum arabic
Gum arabic is tapped from acacia trees, but shrinking woodland and booming cattle herds around the lake have cut the harvest.