Chad

Chad: steady but modest growth, 1980–2024

Chad became an oil exporter in 2003 through the Chad-Cameroon pipeline, which lifted GDP but left the budget highly dependent on crude prices, while most of the population still lives from subsistence farming and herding. Between 1980 and 2024, Chad's GDP per capita grew from $229 to $962 (current US$), a compound annual growth rate of 3.3% — steady but modest growth. Annual GDP growth averaged 4.9% with a year-to-year standard deviation of 8.1 points, reflecting considerable volatility and periodic crises. Structurally, agriculture's share of the economy moved from 45.7% to 37.7% of GDP (a classic decline as the economy industrialized/modernized), while services rose from 46.7% to 29.8% of GDP, a comparatively unusual pattern for this period. On human development, life expectancy rose from 43.5 to 55.2 years, while tertiary school enrollment moved from 0.4% to 4.4%, while the urban population share grew from 19.1% to 26.9%.

What this growth cost: Growth was not without cost: per-capita CO2 emissions rose from 0.05 to 0.14 tonnes CO2e per person; income inequality (Gini index) narrowed from 39.8 to 37.4; the poverty headcount ratio fell from 66.7% to 39.5%.