Despite being three times the size of California, Chad has a population of 17.72 million (2022) and just 300 square miles of irrigated land with just 2.8% of the entire country being arable. Unlike other African countries, Chad is seen to offer little to the outside world, with its poor transport infrastructure including 33,400km of roads of which just 267km are paved. Chad also is off putting to visitors because of its high cost of living. Child trafficking for sexual and other exploitation remains a major concern about Chad and many children are taken for domestic servitude and other forms of labour both in Chad and to other neighbouring nations with children also brought in from Cameroon and the Central African Republic for the same purposes.

Chad is in 189th place out of 191 countries and territories in 2021 when ranked in terms of life expectancy, literacy, access to knowledge and the living standards of a country with close to 66.2% of Chadians living in poverty and only 32% of the population is literate with most of this poverty concentrated in rural areas, where 87% of the country's poor live.

Life is tough in Chad. Most have grown up knowing violence and social instability, only 31.33% are literate dropping to 13.96% for females, those who go to school share their teacher with seventy other pupils, most don't have access to safe water and for the vast majority electricity is unknown (only 10% of the population has reliable electricity and that rate falls to about 1% in rural areas).