Chad

Chad enters 2026 as one of the Sahel's most fragile petro-states, with nominal GDP near US$19.5 billion in 2024 and GDP per capita of roughly US$962. Real growth is projected at 3.4% for 2025, carried by a non-oil expansion of +4.2% as oil GDP contracts by an estimated 0.7%; inflation moderated to about 5.7% in 2024, easing toward 4% in 2025 in line with the CEMAC bloc. Oil still accounts for roughly 15% of GDP but 41% of government revenue and 76% of exports, and crude output has slipped from about 140,000 bpd in 2024 toward an estimated 128,000 bpd in 2025. The IMF approved a new 48-month Extended Credit Facility (~US$625 million) on 25 July 2025, anchoring public debt around 32% of GDP.

The investment thesis for Chad is a contrarian bet on resource control and agricultural breadth rather than a stable oil play. Since nationalising the former ExxonMobil/Doba upstream assets in March 2023, the transition government has asserted direct sovereignty over the value chain, while a large rural economy — subsistence agriculture is roughly 40% of GDP, alongside livestock, and a cotton sector (Cotontchad, 60% owned by Olam Agri) sourcing from 200,000-plus smallholders — provides a non-hydrocarbon base that is now outpacing oil. An emerging gold and mining segment and BEAC's euro-pegged CFA franc add a measure of monetary anchoring to a frontier market that most institutional capital still avoids.

The defining risk is the collision of political-legal uncertainty with acute external shocks. The 2023 seizure of Doba-basin assets remains entangled in unresolved arbitration with Savannah Energy, which Chad won a key Paris ruling against in May 2024 but with no confirmed final settlement, signalling material expropriation and contract-sanctity risk for foreign operators. Simultaneously, the Sudan war has driven over 238,500 new refugees into eastern Chad in 2024 atop a caseload approaching 900,000, straining fiscal and humanitarian capacity, while Mahamat Idriss Déby's disputed 61% election win in May 2024 leaves governance legitimacy contested.