Demographics of Chad
| Demographics of Chad | |
|---|---|
Population pyramid of Chad in 2020 | |
| Population | 17,963,211 (2022 est.) |
| Growth rate | 3.09% (2022 est.) |
| Birth rate | 40.45 births/1,000 population (2022 est.) |
| Death rate | 9.45 deaths/1,000 population (2022 est.) |
| Life expectancy | 53.00 years |
| • male | 51.30 years |
| • female | 54.77 years |
| Fertility rate | 5.46 children born/woman (2022 est.) |
| Infant mortality rate | 65.48 deaths/1,000 live births |
| Net migration rate | -0.13 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2022 est.) |
| Age structure | |
| 0–14 years | 47.43% |
| 65 and over | 2.43% |
| Sex ratio | |
| Total | 0.98 male(s)/female (2022 est.) |
| At birth | 1.04 male(s)/female |
| Under 15 | 1.02 male(s)/female |
| 65 and over | 0.69 male(s)/female |
| Nationality | |
| Nationality | Chadian |
| Language | |
| Official | French, Arabic |
The people of Chad speak more than 100 languages and divide themselves into many ethnic groups. However, language and ethnicity are not the same. Moreover, neither element can be tied to a particular physical type.
Although the possession of a common language shows that its speakers have lived together and have a common history, peoples also change languages. This is particularly so in Chad, where the openness of the terrain, marginal rainfall, frequent drought and famine, and low population densities have encouraged physical and linguistic mobility. Slave raids among non-Muslim peoples, internal slave trade, and exports of captives northward from the ninth to the twentieth centuries also have resulted in language changes.
The Chadian government has avoided official recognition of ethnicity. With the exception of a few surveys conducted shortly after independence, little data were available on this important aspect of Chadian society. Nonetheless, ethnic identity was a significant component of life in Chad.
The peoples of Chad carry significant ancestry from Eastern, Central, Western, and Northern Africa.
Chad's languages fall into ten major groups, each of which belongs to either the Nilo-Saharan, Afro-Asiatic, or Niger–Congo language family. These represent three of the four major language families in Africa; only the Khoisan languages of southern Africa are not represented. The presence of such different languages suggests that the Lake Chad Basin may have been an important point of dispersal in ancient times.