Lake · Chad, Cameroon, Nigeria
Lake Chad
Lake Chad is a very shallow freshwater lake at the southern edge of the Sahara in Africa. Four countries share it, and since the 1960s it has shrunk enormously.
Picture credit: File:Lake chad shore.jpg (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where is Lake Chad?
Countries on its shores: Chad, Cameroon, Nigeria, Niger.
Largest lake of: Chad, Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon.
Middle of the lake: 13.10° N, 14.53° E
The story behind it
Lake Chad lies where Chad, Cameroon, Nigeria and Niger meet. Its size changes with every season and every year: the water is lowest in early summer and highest around December. Around 1870 it covered about 28 000 km², but since the 1960s it has lost more than 90 percent of its area. Today it is often only about 2 000 km², and the open water that is left lies mainly in Chad and Cameroon. No river carries its water away to the sea, yet the water stays fresh, because some of it seeps away underground towards a low desert basin called the Bodélé Depression, taking the salt with it. Sand dunes poke out of the water as islands, and papyrus and reeds grow in many places. The Buduma people build boats from papyrus, and special Kuri cattle live by the lake. More than a million ruffs, a kind of wading bird, can gather here at once. For all four countries it counts as their largest lake.
Find it on the globe
Lake Chad is there as a small blue dot with its name, right on the water. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
How big is Lake Chad?
Today Lake Chad often covers only about 2 000 km², but its size changes greatly with the seasons and from year to year. Around 1870 it was about 28 000 km², many times bigger than today.
Why is Lake Chad fresh even though no river carries its water to the sea?
Some of its water seeps away underground towards the Bodélé Depression, a lower basin in the desert. This water carries salt away with it, so the lake stays fresh.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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