1960 — Chad Is Born

On August 11, 1960, Chad declared independence from France in Fort-Lamy — now N'Djamena — with teacher and trade unionist François Tombalbaye as its first president. The vast Sahelian nation, larger than France itself, began its sovereign life facing a hard geography and a harder task of holding together.

Chad was a mosaic of more than 200 ethnic groups with no real colonial unifier to bind them. Independence joy was soon shadowed by the north-south fault line that would drive decades of coups and desert wars. August 11 marks the birth of a country whose frontier has shaped the fate of the entire Sahel.