Baga Sola, Chad
Monday, August 25, 2025

By Joris Bolomey

On the islands of Lake Chad, young people seem to have been forgotten.
To make ends meet, some join terrorist groups, while others go into exile in search of a dangerous gold rush.
Adam Issa, a 20-year-old fisherman with a youthful face, lowers his gaze, embarrassed to explain the radical decision he made last year. “Friends who left with Boko Haram told me I would make a lot of money with them,” says the young man.
At the end of the rainy season, after pulling in yet another empty net, he crossed the Rubicon. Without warning his family, he left the department of Fouli, north of Lake Chad province where he was born, in a canoe to join his friends in a jihadist camp in Niger.
There, he was trained in the use of 12.7 mm heavy machine guns before fleeing hastily and returning to Chad a month and a half later. He remains silent about the operations in which he allegedly participated with Boko Haram.
– Idle –
Since then, he has been living at the Bol Women’s House, which now houses around 40 repentant jihadists, according to the authorities. But the idle young men of this underdeveloped province in the north of the country are an inexhaustible resource for armed groups hungry for fighters.

Testimonies such as Adam Issa’s illustrate a resurgence of jihadist violence this year, as reduced US aid has further exacerbated the stagnation of economic opportunities.
For the past 15 years, Boko Haram has been terrorizing the populations of the Lake Chad basin. This jihadist group, which emerged in Nigeria in the early 2000s, made global headlines at its peak from 2013 to 2015 after kidnapping 276 schoolgirls in Chibok, in the north of the country.
According to the Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI), one of its dissident branches created in 2016, the Islamic State in West Africa (ISWAP), has claimed responsibility for 232 attacks since the beginning of the year.
“We have nothing to eat, and because of this crisis, our young people are turning to banditry,” laments Abba Ali Abakura, chief of the Kiskra canton in the north of Lake Chad province.
The 57-year-old traditional leader also fears that “all the able-bodied men will leave the region” in search of gold nuggets in the north of the country or the rest of the Sahel. “Only children and the elderly will remain,” he laments, “disgusted and overwhelmed by the situation.”
– Thirst for gold –
At 21, Mahamat Ali Abdallah is hoping for a better life thanks to gold. In the bakery where he worked in Baga Sola, near the lake, he earned less than $10 a month. That salary was too low to achieve “his dream” of getting married, having children, and building a house.

His thirst for gold led him to Niger, then Algeria, to swell the ranks of gold miners digging in narrow shafts up to 30 meters deep in search of the precious ore.
“One day, the earth collapsed on top of us,” he says, showing videos of these gold miners on his phone, before adding: “I managed to get out unharmed, but my friend had all his bones crushed.”
During his two years of hard labor, he sent half of his earnings to his family and used the rest to live on site. Returning to Chad without money, he will set off again in search of a good vein. “It’s better to take that risk than to continue living in poverty,” he says resignedly.
In addition to the lack of resources, there is a lack of training for young people. “Here, school ends in fifth grade,” explains Abba Ali Abakura, due to a lack of available teachers.
Hassimi Djieni, project manager for Humanity and Inclusion, cites a “ratio of one teacher for every 500 to 600 students.” The NGO supports 23 additional teachers in the Fouli department alone. Families cannot afford to send their children to the city to continue their education. So the children work in the fields.
“The authorities need to understand that when you support education, it creates a barrier for young people (tempted to join) armed groups,” insists the humanitarian official.

Humaniterre with AFP