Chad

Chad: Rising Defense Outlays Against a Fragile State Core

Chad's gross domestic product reached $19.5 billion in 2024, per World Bank World Development Indicators (WDI), with per-capita output of $961.56 across a population of just over 20.3 million the same year. Government debt was 29.9% of GDP in 2026, per IMF World Economic Outlook (WEO) figures, and foreign exchange reserves stood at $1.55 billion in 2024, per World Bank WDI.

Military spending totaled $648.8 million in 2025, according to SIPRI's Military Expenditure Database, equal to 3.185% of GDP on SIPRI's own GDP accounting for that year — a figure that should not be cross-checked against the World Bank GDP cited above, since it derives from a separate GDP series. The Correlates of War National Material Capabilities (COW NMC) dataset counts 33,000 active personnel as of 2022 and assigns Chad a Composite Index of National Capability (CINC) score of 0.00097142288 for that year.

V-Dem's 2025 data depict a government with very limited institutional capacity. The electoral democracy index registered 0.242 and the liberal democracy index 0.062. State capacity scored just 0.016 — a strikingly low reading in V-Dem's own scale, pointing to minimal administrative reach by the formal state.

Energy data are mixed in recency. Primary energy use was 0.0306 exajoules in 2023 and electricity generation 0.37 terawatt-hours in 2024, both per Our World in Data. Oil production, by contrast, is a comparatively current 78.396 terawatt-hours for 2024 in the same dataset — a figure that stands out next to the country's otherwise minimal domestic electricity generation, since oil output is measured as extracted energy content rather than power delivered to consumers.

Data gaps

Gas production is listed at zero for 2016, a reading now a decade old and not representative of any later change. The SIPRI milex/GDP share above is tied to SIPRI's own GDP series, not the World Bank's, and the two figures should never be divided against one another. V-Dem's state-capacity score of 0.016 is unusually low even by the standards of this dataset and is flagged here rather than smoothed over.

Sources: World Bank World Development Indicators; IMF World Economic Outlook; SIPRI Military Expenditure Database; Correlates of War National Material Capabilities; V-Dem v15; Our World in Data (Energy).