Quick Facts About Chad
General Information
- • Capital: N’Djamena
- • Currency: Central African CFA franc (XAF), pegged to the euro at 655.957 — not the same currency as the West African XOF
- • Languages: French and Arabic (official), 100+ others
- • Population: about 21 million (World Bank / UN 2025 estimate; the last census was 2009)
- • Time Zone: UTC+1 (West Africa Time), no daylight saving
Connectivity at a Glance
- • Network our plans use: Airtel Chad, and only Airtel Chad
- • Internet users: about 13% of the population (DataReportal, October 2025)
- • Where it works: N’Djamena and the southern towns
- • Where it does not: the Saharan north, Zakouma, the Ennedi, Ounianga
- • Calling code: +235 • Plugs: Type C/D/E/F, 220V
Before you book: Chad requires a visa in advance for almost every nationality, and since May 2026 the national e-visa portal is the only valid channel for ordinary passports — invitation letters and manually issued visas are no longer accepted at the border. A yellow fever certificate is required, and you are expected to register with the police within 72 hours of arrival. Travel advisories are restrictive: the US State Department has Chad at Level 4 (Do Not Travel) for the whole country, and the UK advises against all but essential travel even to N’Djamena. Check the official e-visa portal and your own government’s current advisory — not a visa reseller.
⚠️ Read this before you buy anything
The places most people come to Chad for are the places where there is no mobile network at all.
❌ Zakouma, the Ennedi Massif and the Lakes of Ounianga have no usable coverage
Zakouma National Park is deep in the south-east. The Ennedi Massif and the Lakes of Ounianga are hundreds of kilometres into the Sahara, and both are UNESCO World Heritage sites precisely because almost nobody lives there. Mobile networks in Chad follow people and roads. Out there, there are neither. Any page that tells you an eSIM gives you coverage across Chad is selling you something it cannot deliver — expedition operators in those areas use satellite communications, which belong to the camp and not to your handset.
📉 Chad is one of the least connected countries in the world
DataReportal counted 2.79 million internet users in Chad in October 2025 — roughly 13% of the population — against about 15.5 million mobile connections, many of which are voice and SMS only. That is the context for everything below. The network exists, it is real, and it is thin.
✅ What an eSIM does do here
It gives you working data in N’Djamena and the southern towns from the minute you land, without a roaming bill and without spending your first morning in an operator shop with your passport. It also means that whenever you come back within reach of a town after days in the field, everything syncs. That is a genuinely useful thing. It is just not the same thing as coverage everywhere.
Benefits of eSIM for Chad Travel
🏢 Business Ready
Workable connectivity for meetings, ministries and oil-sector business in N’Djamena, where the network is densest.
🌍 Regional Option
The Chad country plan covers Chad only. If your route crosses into Cameroon, Niger, Sudan or the CAR, our Africa regional packages include Chad alongside 28 other countries.
🏙️ Urban Coverage
Best in N’Djamena, workable in Moundou, Sarh, Abéché and the southern towns, and largely absent between them.
✈️ Live on Landing
Connected at N’Djamena International (NDJ) as soon as you switch off airplane mode — no shop, no queue, no paperwork.
🔄 No Registration Errand
Chadian SIM cards are registered to a named person in person. An eSIM skips that entirely.
📱 Dual SIM
Keep your home number live for two-factor codes while your data runs on the Chad line.
💰 Loading Current Chad eSIM Prices...
Roaming Charges in Chad vs a Local Plan
We are not going to invent numbers for your operator. What we can tell you is which bracket Chad falls into, because that is what decides the bill — and for two carriers the published rate is specific enough to quote.
Europe
The EU “roam like at home” rules that let you use your normal allowance in France or Portugal apply only inside the EU and EEA. Chad is outside them, with no exception, so usage falls into your operator’s most expensive international bracket and is billed per megabyte rather than from a bundle. Both Movistar and Orange España place Chad in their top “Rest of the World” zone and publish a pay-per-use data rate of €12.10 per MB — on the order of €12,000 for a gigabyte at list price. Vodafone España does not publish a Chad rate at all.
Check your own operator’s page for “Chad” specifically, not for “rest of world” — which zone a country sits in differs between carriers.
North and Latin America
The same problem by a different route. US carrier day passes and Latin American regional bundles are built around the Americas and Europe; Central Africa is normally outside the included-country list entirely. The usual outcome is out-of-bundle international roaming, or no purchasable option for Chad at all.
If your carrier sells a daily travel pass, confirm Chad appears on its specific country list before relying on it.
The practical rule: for a destination no bundle includes, a single day of roaming without a pass usually costs more than the entire trip on a local plan. Live Chad plan prices are in the block above.
How to Install Your Chad eSIM
Simple Installation Steps
- Purchase: Buy your Chad eSIM plan online
- Receive QR Code: Get installation instructions via email
- Install: Scan the QR code in your phone settings before you travel
- Activate: Turn on the eSIM line and data roaming for it when you land in Chad
Install at home, not at the airport. Adding an eSIM profile needs a working internet connection, and the one place you are guaranteed not to have one is the moment you land in a country where you have no service yet. Scan the QR code over your own Wi-Fi before you leave, and simply switch the line on when you arrive.
Network Coverage Across Chad
Chad divides cleanly in two for connectivity purposes. The Sahelian and Sudanian south holds most of the population, most of the roads and effectively all of the network. The Saharan north — Borkou, Ennedi and Tibesti — is enormous, nearly empty, and has coverage only in and immediately around the scattered towns.
Where you can expect service
- • N’Djamena — by far the best coverage in the country
- • Moundou — the southern commercial centre
- • Sarh, Doba, Kelo, Bongor, Pala, Koumra — southern towns
- • Abéché — the main eastern hub
- • Along the main southern road corridors, intermittently
Where you should expect nothing
- • The Ennedi Massif and the Lakes of Ounianga
- • The Tibesti Mountains and the far north generally
- • Zakouma National Park and its approaches
- • Most of the Lake Chad basin away from the towns
- • Long stretches of desert track between any two settlements
On speeds: our Chad plans are provisioned as 4G on Airtel Chad. Treat that as a ceiling rather than an expectation. ITU-derived figures put around 60% of Chad’s population within reach of 4G, which leaves roughly eight million people on 3G or worse, and there is no 5G network in Chad at all. Quality is a live issue rather than a settled one: the regulator ARCEP fined Airtel about XAF 5 billion in 2023 over deteriorating network quality, the government issued both operators an ultimatum over it in August 2025, and Airtel announced roughly US$90 million of network investment the following month. Download maps, tickets and documents while you have a good connection, not when you need them.
Data Plan Recommendations by Travel Type
Business traveller
Meetings, ministries and oil-sector work, almost all of it inside N’Djamena
Worth knowing:
- •Email, messaging and document sharing
- •Video calls over the hotel connection where possible
- •Ride-hailing is not established — arrange transport through your hotel
- •Keep your home line active for two-factor codes
Humanitarian and NGO staff
Field rotations to the Lake Chad basin or the eastern refugee-hosting provinces
Worth knowing:
- •Expect long stretches with no signal outside the towns
- •Check your own security briefing before relying on any coverage claim
- •Sync reports and forms when you are back in a covered town
- •Satellite communications remain the standard for deep field work
Overland and desert travel
Zakouma, the Ennedi Massif and the Lakes of Ounianga — spectacular, and almost entirely unconnected
Worth knowing:
- •Download offline maps before leaving N’Djamena, not after
- •Plan on days at a time with no data at all in the Ennedi and Ounianga
- •Upload photos when you are back in a town, not from camp
- •A data plan is not a safety device — remote travel here needs a satellite messenger
Short stay or transit
A stopover in N’Djamena or a couple of nights before moving on
Worth knowing:
- •Flight and hotel confirmations
- •Messaging home on arrival
- •Maps for the city
- •The 1GB and 2GB plans are built for exactly this
Data usage tips for Chad
Save data:
- • Download offline maps and translation packs before you leave the capital
- • Turn off automatic photo and video backup for the trip
- • Use hotel Wi-Fi for large uploads, but do not depend on it
- • Cache the documents you will need in the field
Planning estimates:
- • Navigation: around 10MB per hour
- • Social media: around 80MB per hour
- • Video calls: around 300MB per hour
- • Email: around 5MB per hour
These are planning figures, not measurements. Real usage depends on the app, the quality you pick and the network you are actually connected to.
Not sure which plan fits your Chad trip? Our support team can help you size it to your route.
Compare all Chad plansNetwork Providers in Chad
Airtel Chad
This is the network your eSIM uses
- • MCC 622, MNC 01 — verified in our own coverage data
- • LTE on band 3 (1800 MHz); Airtel’s own marketing calls it the largest 4G network in Chad
- • 4G in N’Djamena and the larger southern towns, 3G or nothing beyond them
- • Every Chad plan we sell routes over it, country and regional alike
Moov Africa Tchad
The other operator — not carried by our plans
- • MCC 622, MNC 03 — LTE on band 7 (2600 MHz)
- • Was Tigo Chad under Millicom; Maroc Telecom completed the purchase in June 2019 and the Moov Africa brand replaced Tigo in December 2020
- • Slightly ahead of Airtel on subscribers — the two are close to an even split
- • Not available to your eSIM — do not select it manually
Names you may see that do not apply here. “Tigo Chad” is a dead brand — the network still exists, but it has been Moov Africa Tchad since December 2020. Orange, which appears on a great many generic African connectivity pages, does not operate a network in Chad at all. And there is a third licensed mobile brand, Salam, belonging to the state operator Sotel Tchad, but it is commercially absent; Sotel’s real present-day role is fixed lines and the fibre backbone. One more thing worth stating plainly because plan listings sometimes imply otherwise: there is no 5G network in Chad, from any operator.
Internet Shutdowns & Access
This belongs in a connectivity guide because it is the one failure mode no data plan can solve. In March 2018 Chad blocked WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube after protests over constitutional changes. The block lasted about 472 days — sixteen months — and was lifted in July 2019. It remains one of the longest social media shutdowns recorded anywhere. Access Now and NetBlocks documented further disruptions in July-August 2020, around the February 2021 standoff before that year’s election, and for several days after the October 2022 protests. Access Now’s election monitoring notes that Chad did not shut the internet down around the May 2024 presidential election.
There is a second, less political failure mode that matters at least as much. Chad is landlocked and its international connectivity has depended on a single fibre path through Cameroon. When flooding in Cameroon washed out those cables in October 2024, the whole country lost internet for more than ten days — nothing to do with government, and equally impossible for any SIM to route around. Shorter outages from the same fragility hit in March and August 2024, and Chad has since been working on a second route north through Niger.
What this means for you
- • A national block applies at the network, so no eSIM and no local SIM routes around it
- • Blocks have historically targeted specific apps, not all internet access
- • Email and SMS have often kept working when apps did not
- • A fibre cut is different again: it takes everything down, hotel Wi-Fi included
Sensible precautions
- • Agree a fallback contact method with people at home before you fly
- • Keep a second channel available — email, SMS, your employer’s system
- • Download offline maps and documents rather than relying on live access
- • Using a VPN to get around a block is a decision with local consequences; make it knowingly
Essential Travel Tips for Chad
Health & Safety
- • A yellow fever certificate is required on arrival
- • Malaria prophylaxis is standard advice for Chad — ask a travel clinic early
- • Read your own government’s current travel advisory before booking
- • Drink bottled or treated water only
- • Carry your own medication; pharmacy supply is unreliable outside the capital
- • Travel insurance with medical evacuation cover is not optional here
Money & Transport
- • Cash in Central African CFA francs (XAF) for almost everything
- • West African CFA francs (XOF) are a different currency and are not accepted
- • ATMs are concentrated in N’Djamena and often out of cash
- • Agree taxi fares before you get in; there is no established ride-hailing
- • Overland travel is slow, seasonal and often needs a permit and a convoy
- • Download offline maps before leaving the capital
When to go: the dry season, roughly November to April, with December to February the comfortable window — nights in the desert can drop close to freezing while N’Djamena regularly passes 40°C in April and May. Zakouma’s wildlife viewing peaks in March to May as the water recedes and animals concentrate, but the park floods and becomes impassable from June to October. The harmattan brings sandstorms through the dry season, which disrupt flights and are hard on equipment.
Must-Visit Attractions
Coverage note attached to each, because it is the thing this guide is actually for.
In and around N’Djamena
- 🏛️ Chad National Museum: the country’s archaeology and history — coverage fine
- 🕌 Grand Mosque: a N’Djamena landmark — coverage fine
- 🏺 Sao archaeological heritage: the pre-Islamic culture of the Chari-Logone plain — coverage fine in the city
- 🌿 The Chari and Logone rivers: they meet at the capital — coverage fine
The remote north and east
- 🐘 Zakouma National Park: Chad’s conservation success story — no usable coverage
- 🏜️ Ennedi Massif (UNESCO): sandstone arches and rock art — no coverage
- 💧 Lakes of Ounianga (UNESCO): Saharan lakes that should not exist — no coverage
- 🌊 Lake Chad: historically vast, now much reduced — towns only; check advisories for the basin
- 🏔️ Tibesti Mountains: volcanic and spectacular — no coverage, and multiple governments advise against travel to this border region
Troubleshooting Guide
eSIM Not Connecting?
- 1. Turn on airplane mode for 30 seconds, then turn it off
- 2. Make sure data roaming is ON for the eSIM line — this is the single most common cause
- 3. Check the eSIM line is set as your mobile data line
- 4. If you select a network manually, choose Airtel. It is the only Chadian network your plan can use — picking Moov Africa will leave you with no service
Slow Data Speeds?
- • 4G exists in the capital and larger towns; elsewhere 3G is normal
- • Evening congestion is real and noticeable
- • Do large downloads early in the day
- • If you switched networks manually, switch back to Automatic or to Airtel
No Coverage Outside Town?
- • This is expected behaviour in Chad, not a fault with your eSIM
- • The desert and the parks have no network to connect to
- • Signal returns as you approach the next settlement
- • If you need to be reachable off-grid, that is a satellite messenger, not a data plan
Apps Not Loading But Data Shows Connected?
- • Check whether other sites load — if email works and social apps do not, that pattern matches a targeted block rather than a network fault
- • See the shutdowns section above for context
- • Restarting and reinstalling will not fix a network-level restriction
Emergency Contacts in Chad
Emergency Numbers
- 📞 Police: 17
- 🚒 Fire brigade: 18
- 🌍 Calling code: +235
Operators are unlikely to speak English. Chad has no single unified emergency number equivalent to 112 or 911, and ambulance provision is limited — in practice, private medical transport is arranged through your hotel, employer or insurer.
Before you travel
- • Save your embassy or consulate number from your own foreign ministry’s website
- • Save your insurer’s 24-hour assistance line and policy number offline
- • Register with your embassy if your country offers a traveller registration scheme
- • Keep an offline copy of your passport, visa and vaccination certificate
We do not list hospital, taxi or airport switchboard numbers here. The ones that circulate for Chad could not be verified against an official source, and a wrong number in an emergency is worse than no number.
Cultural Guide & Etiquette
Do
- ✅ Learn some French — it is the language of administration and business
- ✅ Dress modestly, particularly in the north and centre
- ✅ Greet properly and unhurriedly; it matters
- ✅ Ask before photographing people
- ✅ Show respect to elders and to religious practice
Do not
- ❌ Photograph military sites, government buildings, airports or bridges
- ❌ Volunteer political opinions
- ❌ Drink alcohol in public, especially in the Muslim-majority north
- ❌ Eat or pass items with the left hand
- ❌ Assume the whole country shares one culture — Chad does not
Cultural note: Chad is broadly Muslim in the north and centre and broadly Christian and animist in the south, with French and Arabic both official and in everyday use. Photography restrictions around anything that could be read as strategic are taken seriously — this is the rule most visitors fall foul of.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which network does a Chad eSIM actually connect to?
Airtel Chad, and only Airtel Chad. We checked our own coverage data on 12 September 2026: every Chad plan we sell — the country plans, the Africa regional packages and the Discover global packages — carries a single Chadian network entry, Airtel (MCC 622, MNC 01). None of them carries Moov Africa Tchad. If your phone ever asks you to pick a network by hand in Chad, Airtel is the one to choose; it is the only one your plan can use.
Will my eSIM work at Zakouma, the Ennedi Massif or the Lakes of Ounianga?
Realistically, no. These are the three things most people actually come to Chad for, and they are exactly where mobile coverage does not reach. Zakouma National Park sits in a remote part of the south-east; the Ennedi Massif and the Lakes of Ounianga are deep in the Sahara, hundreds of kilometres from the nearest town of any size. Mobile networks in Chad follow population and roads, and there is very little of either out there. Camps and expedition operators in those areas work on satellite communications, which belong to the camp and not to your phone. An eSIM cannot build towers. What it gives you is data the moment you are back within reach of a town, with no roaming bill attached.
Where in Chad does coverage actually work?
N’Djamena and the southern belt. The capital has the densest network by a wide margin, and the southern and south-western towns — Moundou, Sarh, Doba, Kelo, Bongor, Pala, Koumra — are where the rest of the population and the rest of the towers are. Abéché in the east is the main hub of that half of the country. North of roughly the 15th parallel the country turns Saharan and coverage thins to nothing between settlements. Even inside covered towns, expect 3G more often than the network status bar suggests, and expect it to slow down in the evening.
Is Chad really that badly connected?
Yes, and it is worth knowing before you plan around a data plan. DataReportal put internet users in Chad at 2.79 million in October 2025 — about 13% of the population — against roughly 15.5 million active mobile connections, many of them voice and SMS only. That places Chad near the bottom of every global connectivity ranking. This is not a reason to skip the eSIM; it is a reason to treat data as something you will have in the capital and the towns, and not as something you will have continuously.
Does an Africa regional plan cover Chad?
Yes — and this is one of the few African destinations where that is true. We checked on 12 September 2026: Chad is in the eSIMaccess Africa regional family (29 countries) and in Airalo’s Hello Africa family, and both route it over Airtel Chad. It is a genuinely useful option if your trip also takes in Cameroon, Niger, Sudan or the Central African Republic. The trade-off is price: the regional packages cost roughly twice as much per gigabyte as the Chad country plan. If Chad is your only stop, buy the country plan.
How much data should I buy for Chad?
Less than you would for a connected country, because you will spend part of the trip with no signal. Our Chad country ladder runs 1, 2, 3, 5, 10 and 20 GB — there is no unlimited plan for Chad from any provider we work with. A few days in N’Djamena is comfortably a 1-2 GB trip. A working fortnight based in the capital with trips to the south is 5-10 GB. The 20 GB plan is for long humanitarian or contractor rotations. Live prices are on this page.
Has Chad blocked the internet or social media before?
Yes, and for longer than almost anywhere else. In March 2018 the government blocked WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube following protests over constitutional changes; the block ran for roughly 472 days — about sixteen months — before being lifted in July 2019. Access Now and NetBlocks have documented further disruptions around later periods of political tension. What this means practically: no eSIM, and no local SIM either, routes around a national-level block, because the restriction is applied at the network. If being reachable matters, agree a fallback with the people at home before you fly — email and SMS often keep working when specific apps do not — and be aware that using a VPN to get around a block is a decision with its own local consequences.
Do I need a visa for Chad?
Yes, for almost everyone, and it has to be done online before you fly. Chad launched its national e-visa portal in December 2024, and since May 2026 that portal is the only valid channel for ordinary passports — invitation letters and manually issued authorisations are no longer accepted at the border. Chad’s visa-exempt list is short and mostly regional; EU passports, including Spain, and the major Latin American passports are all outside it. A yellow fever vaccination certificate is required, and you are also expected to register with the police within 72 hours of arrival. Because the rules changed recently, use the official Chadian e-visa portal and your own foreign ministry’s page rather than a third-party visa reseller.
Is Chad safe to travel to?
That is not a question we should answer for you, and any travel page that gives you a one-word verdict is doing you a disservice. What we can report is where the advisories actually sit. The UK Foreign Office advises against all travel to Borkou, Ennedi Ouest, Ennedi Est and Tibesti, to western Kanem, to the Lake Chad region and to within 30 km of every one of Chad’s borders — and against all but essential travel to the rest of the country, N’Djamena included. The US State Department has Chad at Level 4, Do Not Travel, for the whole country. Spain’s foreign ministry advises postponing any non-essential travel. Chad is also hosting well over a million refugees from the war in Sudan, concentrated in the eastern provinces of Ouaddai, Wadi Fira, Sila and Ennedi Est. Read your own government’s current advisory before you book, and follow your employer’s or operator’s security briefing while you are there.
What languages are spoken in Chad?
French and Arabic are the two official languages, and both are genuinely in daily use — French in administration and business, Chadian Arabic as the common spoken language across much of the country. More than 100 other languages are spoken alongside them. If you speak neither, download an offline French pack before you go; you will not always have the data to translate on the fly.
Can I just buy a local SIM when I arrive?
You can, and for a long stay with heavy usage it may work out cheaper. The cost is time and paperwork: Chadian lines are registered to a named person, so you need your passport, an Airtel or Moov shop, and business hours. If you land in the evening you are looking at losing part of the next day. An eSIM installs at home over your own Wi-Fi, sits alongside your normal number, and is live the moment you land. The other difference is that a local SIM gives you a Chadian number — which is what you would need for mobile money — and an eSIM does not.
What currency will I be paying in?
The Central African CFA franc, ISO code XAF, pegged to the euro at a fixed rate of 655.957 XAF to €1. One trap worth naming: this is not the same currency as the West African CFA franc (XOF) used in Senegal, Mali, Niger and Côte d’Ivoire. The two share a name and a peg value but are separate currencies, and XOF notes are not accepted in Chad. Chad is overwhelmingly a cash economy; card acceptance is limited to a handful of hotels in the capital, and ATMs outside N’Djamena are scarce.
Ready to Travel to Chad Connected?
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