The importance of charcoal in Chad

Dadje Aquilas, ENVODEV's National Coordinator, and Rodoumbaye Ghislain, ENVODEV's Administrator share their thoughts on the charcoal ban and ENVODEV's eco-charcoal project in Chad. To know more about the project, go to www.envodev.org

Charcoal Fabrication Demonstration

Demonstration of how to make charcoal briquettes, or Eco-charcoal, from rice-straw in Chad. Rice-straw is burned as waste at the end of harvest each year. This video shows how ENVODEV seeks to train people to make charcoal from a discarded resource, in lieu of wood charcoal.

The problem of Deforestation

In Chad, the Sahara Desert represents nearly half the country´s surface, and only 10 % of the rest is forest covered. Every year, Chad loses .60 % of its forest. The primary causes are slash-and-burn agriculture and charcoal fabrication.

Below is a video that shows the current state of the forest in Southern Chad, where Chad´s totality of wooded area is located. Yanice Akono, ENVODEV´s coordinator in Chad, meets two young tree cutters. Located between Moundou and Doba, the place where Yanice is standing shows how depleted the forest is, and how young the trees are (Max. 5 years old). The two young cutters choose a three-year-old sappling to cut down and sell along the road as cooking fuel. The speed at which deforestation is taking place in Chad calls for immediate solutions to be found. The government ban on wood-charcoal production does not keep Chadians from cutting trees down for cooking fuel; there are no viable alternatives in Chad. 

A history and overview of Chad

On August 11, 1960, Chad gained independence from France. In half a century of independence Chad has known decades of on-off war, poverty crisis, and trouble with its neighbours like Sudan. Then oil was discovered and last year the country signed a treaty with Sudan putting an end to the fighting. So are things finally coming together for Chad, or will its newly found resource become a curse as it has in many African nations? Watch this video for a good overview of the country and the dilemmas it faces in the 21st century.