Chad: Towards Democratisation Or Petro-dictatorship?

Chad is currently undergoing two processes of utmost importance for its future--democratization and oil extraction. The democratization process has been slow and almost come to a stalemate; meanwhile the oil extraction has accelerated. The president, Idriss Déby, is leading both, and they are clearly not independent of each other. This paper provides studies of the two and aims to analyze the backgrounds and prospects of success, as well as their effects on each other.

Comparing Chad with the experience from other developing oil countries, the paper examines the most probable scenario that the oil project further jeopardizes the democratic process in Chad and leads to increasing centralization and corruption in the government. The population welfare will be improved to some extent, but far from what could be expected from the oil incomes, which will be partly mismanaged.

The paper also analyses the effects of the possible implementation of control mechanisms and local and international checks and balance systems, and how a coordinated cooperation between the Chadian government and the civil society around effective poverty reduction strategy and good governance, with support from the World Bank and the international community, could work.