Two years ago, French soldiers were packing up. In November 2024, N’Djamena terminated the defence agreement binding it to Paris and brought six decades of unbroken military presence to a close. Few observers imagined then that the two countries would be back around the same table so soon, this time to talk contracts.
The thaw dates from 29 January 2026. Received at the Élysée by Emmanuel Macron, President Mahamat Idriss Déby Itno committed with his host to building a « revitalised » partnership founded on mutual respect and shared interests, with the economy in the front line. The formula still had to be given substance.
That happened on 25 September. On that day, MEDEF International and the Republic of Chad held a business forum in Paris which, according to the French embassy in Chad, gathered around a hundred French companies and some two hundred Chadian firms. Water and sanitation, energy, transport, agriculture, livestock, mining, digital technology, health, training: few sectors were missing from the programme. Several cooperation agreements were concluded there, the newspaper Le Pays reports, notably in livestock, health and energy.
For N’Djamena, what is at stake has a name, Tchad Connexion 2030. This national plan lists 268 investment projects valued at 30 billion dollars, with the ambition of raising GDP by 60% by the end of the decade. Finding funders and private operators is therefore a necessity, and French groups know the terrain.
On the French side, the talk is of « demilitarising » and « diversifying » a relationship too long reduced to its bases and operations. The rapprochement was confirmed in early October, with the second anniversary of the break only weeks away.
The picture calls for some nuance, though. According to Le Pays, French officers travelled to N’Djamena in April to assess Chad’s needs in training and intelligence, and a surveillance aircraft is said to have been deployed against jihadist groups active around Lake Chad. Security would thus be returning through the back door, in the form of information sharing instead of visible troops. These details rest on press sources and have not been officially confirmed.
The regional context weighs heavily in this turnaround. The war in Sudan is spilling over the eastern border, and as early as January France 24 linked the thaw to the Chadian government’s difficult position in its neighbourhood. N’Djamena has not given up its other partners for all that: the United Arab Emirates lent it close to 700 million dollars between 2023 and 2024, and Turkey has gained ground.
Paris is therefore no longer an exclusive ally, only one partner among others. That may be what makes the relationship healthier, provided the memoranda signed in Paris turn into building sites in Chad.