Lake Chad replenishment project

The Lake Chad replenishment project is a proposed major water diversion scheme to divert water from the Congo River basin to Lake Chad to prevent it drying up. Various versions have been proposed. Most would involve damming some of the right tributaries of the Congo River and channeling some of the water to Lake Chad via a canal to the Chari River basin.^[1]

It was first proposed in 1929 by Herman Sörgel as part of his Atlantropa project, as a way to irrigate the Sahara. In the 1960s, Lake Chad began to shrink, and the idea was revived as a solution to that problem.

The members of the Lake Chad Basin International Commission are Chad, the Central African Republic, Nigeria, Cameroon and Niger. Concerned by shrinkage of the lake's area from 20,000 square kilometres (7,700 sq mi) in 1972 to 2,000 square kilometres (770 sq mi) in 2002, they met in January 2002 to discuss the project. Both the ADB^{[clarification needed]} and the Islamic Development Bank expressed interest in the project. However, the member states of the Congo-Ubangi-Sangha Basin International Commission (Congo-Kinshasa, Congo-Brazzaville and the Central African Republic) expressed concern that the project would reduce the energy potential of the Inga hydroelectric dam, would affect navigation on the Ubangi and Congo rivers and would reduce fish catches on these rivers.^[2] However, even the largest proposals would divert less than 8% of the Congo's water, while the remaining 92-95% would not only reach Inga, but would produce electricity twice, first at the new dams and eventually at Inga.

In 2011, the Canadian firm CIMA, under contract from Lake Chad Basin Commission, produced a feasibility study of several versions of the project.^[3]