Chad is the fifth-largest country in Africa, a vast landlocked nation spanning from the Sahara Desert in the north — where the Tibesti Mountains contain dramatic desert landscapes — to tropical savannas and wetlands in the south. Lake Chad, which gives the country its name, was once one of Africa's largest lakes but has shrunk dramatically in recent decades due to climate change and agricultural water use. Chad is among the world's most remote and least developed countries.
Population and area are rounded.
Chad's flag combines French and Pan-African colours: blue for the sky and hope, yellow for the sun and the desert of the north, and red for progress and the sacrifices made for independence. Adopted in 1959, it is almost identical to Romania's flag. The match drew international attention in 2004, but neither country changed its flag.
Chad first planned a green, yellow and red flag, but Mali had already adopted the same Pan-African colours, so blue replaced green. The flag was adopted on 6 November 1959, before independence from France in 1960. Lake Chad, which gives the country its name, has shrunk dramatically since the 1960s. The capital is N'Djamena.
Vertical blue-yellow-red. Romania's blue is brighter; Chad's is a darker indigo.
Lake Chad, once one of the world's largest lakes, has shrunk by 90% since the 1960s.
Chad's flag is often mixed up with these. Learn to tell them apart:
Every flag that has flown over Chad, from today back through time.
Adopted in 1959: a blue-yellow-red tricolour. Chad switched from pan-African green to blue to avoid clashing with Mali — coincidentally producing a flag nearly identical to Romania's, a resemblance Chad raised at the UN in 2004.
Conquered piecemeal around 1900 and folded into French Equatorial Africa, Chad flew the French tricolor as a colony. Remote and lightly governed, it was the last part of the federation to be brought fully under French control, and gained its own flag only on the eve of independence in 1959–60.
Chad shares a land border with 6 countries: Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Libya, Niger, Nigeria and Sudan.
9 other national flags use the same main colours as Chad's.
Play Globalio and learn Chad's flag
Romania
Andorra
Moldova
Cameroon
Central African Republic
Libya
Niger
Nigeria
Sudan
Colombia
DR Congo
Ecuador
Liechtenstein
Mongolia
Venezuela