Chad

Chad runs vertically through every belt of the Sahel: the absolute desert of the north, with the volcanic Tibesti massif and the sandstone plateaux of the Ennedi; the central Sahelian steppe; and the Sudanian savannahs of the south, wetter and more wooded. Lake Chad, which in the 1960s was one of the largest lakes in Africa, has lost most of its surface and become a shifting mosaic of shallows, islands and reedbeds that still sustains fisheries and great concentrations of birds. Zakouma park, in the south, protects floodable savannah where thousands of buffalo, giraffes and antelopes gather in the dry season, along with an elephant population recovered after devastating poaching. In the Ennedi, the gorges hold permanent pools where Nile crocodiles survive, isolated since the Sahara dried out.