The nation of Chad in central Africa has been without internet access for 11 days, due to floods in a neighboring country. Now, it is planning to spend $31 million to build a new cable to connect it to the internet. Chad, sometimes referred to as the “Dead Heart of Africa,” is a poor, backward country that has been in a state of civil war for much of its existence. Even before the recent floods, there were regular internet disruptions that made life difficult for businesses in Chad’s capital, N’djamena. As a news report yesterday explained,
Officials in Chad are stepping up efforts to connect the central African state to a regional fiber-optic network after cable breakages caused by flooding in neighboring Cameroon caused a protracted internet blackout.
Authorities in the country have been unable to reestablish internet connections since the blackout began 10 days ago.
The central African state lost internet access when fiber-optic cables in Cameroon, the southern neighbor via which landlocked Chad is digitally networked, saw cables washed out by flooding….
Brahim Abdelkerim, secretary general of Chad’s ministry of telecommunications, said that by February 2025, there will no longer be frustrations as a result of regular internet disruptions that paralyze businesses in Chad. He said Chad and Niger governments have made firm commitments to supervise the project to completion….Abdelkerim said Chad will lay some 500 kilometers of cable from N’djamena to the Niger border. The ADB said the EU will give 31.4 million dollars and the ADB will provide the other 55 million needed to complete the project….
Sona Jarosova, head of the EU political mission to Chad, said Friday on Chad state TV that connecting Chad to the Trans-Saharan fiber-optic network will reduce or stop regular blackouts caused by disruptions in Cameroon, which is the only country that connects landlocked Chad to the internet. She said the alternative connection will remove Chad from its present digital isolation.
Earlier this year, Chad’s government killed an opposition leader, and then bulldozed his party’s headquarters. Although Chad has received U.S. aid, its current president seized the Chadian assets of the American oil company Exxon, whose production of oil was the main revenue source and source of export revenue for Chad, nationalizing billions of dollars in assets without compensation. Chad’s president has also destabilized neighboring Sudan, allowing the United Arab Emirates to set up a base in northern Chad to help the genocidal Rapid Support Forces (RSF) take over much of the neighboring country of Sudan. The RSF have slaughtered members of Sudan’s Masalit ethnic group, looted much of the country, raped many women, enslaved many African men to serve as farm laborers or domestic servants, and enslaved many women to be sex slaves. The current president’s regime tortured many students who protested for democracy and killed some of them.
