In Chad, farmers and herders struggle to coexist amid climate change

“We’ve lost the baraka — God’s blessing — because of our sins, the crimes we’ve committed against each other,” lamented El Hadj Jibriil, his wrinkled forehead and squinting eyes straining against the bright sun. “The dry seasons are getting hotter. Floods are more frequent. Our investments no longer pay off. The price of millet has tripled in five years.”

Sitting cross-legged on a mat under a makeshift canopy — torn cloth stretched over crooked sticks — the elderly sheikh, dressed in a worn blue djellaba, lists the misfortunes that have struck his community in recent years. A nomadic camel herder, he’s had to send the younger men of his clan farther south with the livestock to find better grazing. The man, ancient and weathered, waits with the elderly women and small children at this ramshackle camp about 60 kilometers (37 miles) from N’Djamena. When the rains come in June, they’ll head back north.

“Farmers and agro-pastoralists have seen a drop in production over the past 20 years — peanuts, sesame, sorghum, rice, millet, sugarcane…” said Olivier Békol, an agricultural technician, during a community meeting about soil fertility. He blames “deforestation and bushfires linked to drought.”

The Sahel is one of the regions most vulnerable to climate change. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, temperatures in the region are expected to rise by at least 2 degrees Celsius by 2040, increasing droughts. “The desert keeps creeping downward,” said Seid Sultane Ali, director of the Acord-Chad, the national branch of an international development and peacebuilding NGO that supports rural communities in managing land use and resolving conflicts, speaking from his office in N’Djamena. The rainy season is already shorter — and more intense — causing floods. In 2022 and 2024, torrential rains and swollen rivers overwhelmed parts of Chad, including the capital, destroying crops and washing away seeds.

‘Everyone is staking claims on the same land’

In a country that remains 80% rural and dependent on subsistence agriculture, these increasingly extreme weather events are hitting both farming and herding — long considered the “two lifelines of Chad” — especially hard. As northern grazing lands dry up, pastoral communities move south. But rising population and the expansion of large-scale farming are eating into fertile land and infringing on herding corridors.

“There’s no land or agricultural code, so everyone’s just staking claims on the same land,” said Ali.

The situation is made worse by the Chadian state’s questionable role. “Since the early 2000s, administrative and military officials from the north have privately owned herds in the south. They hire herders who, protected by the central government, now use military weapons when clashing with sedentary communities,” according to an August 2024 report by the International Crisis Group (ICG), a Brussels-based think tank that monitors and analyzes global conflicts. These movements often result in trampled crops and retaliatory attacks on livestock.

From 2021 to 2024, at least 1,230 people were killed and more than 2,200 injured in farmer-herder conflicts in southern and central Chad, according to ICG. A disturbing trend: armed herders now also target women and children.

“Land sustains life but also causes conflict. We’re killing each other in a country that has so much space,” said Abderrahmane Ali Gossoumian, national coordinator of the Peace and Reconciliation Monitoring Committee, a Chadian civil society coalition, promotes dialogue and conflict prevention. “We have to heal the fractures and learn to live together.”

Local agreements on natural resources

That’s the goal of Acord-Chad, backed by CCFD-Terre Solidaire, one of France’s largest international solidarity groups that blends Catholic social teaching with a focus on justice, solidarity, and local empowerment, and funding from the French Development Agency, France’s public development bank. Through the “Great Green Wall” initiative to combat desertification and support local communities, the NGO helps stakeholders on shared land negotiate and sign local conventions to manage natural resources.

We meet some of them on market day in Linia, a village south of N’Djamena in the heart of the bush. The flat, dusty Sahel landscape — dotted with acacias and palms — is broken only by goat and camel herds and villagers hauling sacks of manure or firewood on donkeys and motorcycles.

“Before the agreement, there were constant disputes between fishermen, farmers and herders. Hooks left on the ground injured cattle. The animals trampled fishing nets,” recalled fisherman Haroun Gobnassi. “Now the rules are clearer. You have to remove your fishing gear in the morning and evening to let the animals pass. You can’t block the river with nets, so the fish can move downstream. And herding paths must be marked.”

Lying barefoot on a mat along the Chari River, his cracked heels caked with dirt, he smiled.

A culture of dialogue

“Working with traditional and administrative authorities to map land use helped us build a real culture of dialogue,” said Alloum Hassan, a respected local elder, his comments briefly drowned out by a snorting hippo basking in the river. “Now, we inform herders when sorghum harvest begins. They wait until we’re done, then bring their cattle to graze on the leftover stalks.”

He laughs. “Some Fellata — semi-settled Fulani — have even started farming. They’re better at it than we are!”

Still, NGOs can’t fix everything. “These tensions started with government corruption,” Gobnassi said. “Anyone can bribe an official to avoid compensating the victims.” But progress is happening, thanks to Acord-Chad. “We trained people in advocacy, told them to stand up for their rights,” said Ali.

“Not long ago, a herder let his cattle trample farmers’ fields, thinking he’d get away with it,” Hassan explained. “We contacted the general who had hired the herder. Luckily, the general feared for his reputation and warned the man there would be serious consequences if he disrespected the farmers again.”

Surge in herders overwhelms resources

Southern Chad has also felt the strain from an influx of herders crossing the border during repeated crises in the Central African Republic. Some have since settled in the region. By 2017, Chad had more than 25 million cattle and 56 million small ruminants — for a population of around 16 million, according to a 2022 World Bank report. The arrival of so many new animals put enormous pressure on land and resources, escalating tensions.

“There were more thefts and killings. We couldn’t sleep,” recalled Bertin Nandounem, coordinator of community mediators in Doba, near the Central African border. “In 2019, some farmers spent the night in trees with flashlights to guard their fields. We asked ourselves, ‘Why us?’ Our neighbors, Cameroon and Nigeria, live in peace. We envied them.”

Training community mediators

The Peace and Reconciliation Monitoring Committee and Kawtal—a sub-regional union of pastoral organizations that defends the rights of nomadic communities and promotes their civic participation—began training community mediators and encouraging social interaction, with support from CCFD-Terre Solidaire. One initiative included setting up water points that also served as places for people to meet and connect. Herders, farmers, Christians, Muslims…

“This is quiet, behind-the-scenes work,” Nandounem noted. “Even if there’s still mistrust, no one is killing anymore.”

“We even got them to play a soccer match,” beamed Hervé Dingamnayel Mentodogarte, a community mediator. “At the end, they traded millet for milk.” A reminder that they’re interdependent: farmers feed the herders, and herders fertilize the land with manure.

Finding solutions — and hope

Beyond dialogue, there are practical solutions. “We help farmers adapt faster,” Ali said. “We’ve introduced more productive seeds — sesame, corn, cowpeas — and we encourage vegetable gardening after the rainy season.”

“We’ve started planting a fast-growing sorghum with dense heads,” Hassan said. “Birds can peck at it, but they can’t hollow it out.”

Communities are also reviving ancestral techniques: crop rotation, off-season farming, agroforestry — especially with acacias, which provide fodder during the dry season.

Local solutions abound. But for some, the ultimate help must come from above. “May God return the baraka,” El Hadj Jibriil, the camel herder, prayed. “May our labor bear fruit. May we eat our fill.”