Story Highlights

• Restored irrigation and solar-powered pumps are bringing abandoned farmland back into production around Lake Chad.
• PROLAC has helped create jobs, raise incomes, and strengthen livelihoods for farmers, women, youth, and displaced communities.
• By improving roads, markets, and regional coordination, the project is reconnecting communities and building long-term resilience.

Before dawn, Moussa Mahamat used to walk the irrigation canals of Chad's Mamdi polder, competing with fellow farmers for a share of scarce water. Broken infrastructure, high fuel costs, and unreliable irrigation meant that every growing season was uncertain.

Today, solar-powered pumps hum steadily across fields that were once abandoned. Water flows through rehabilitated canals, crops thrive, and farmers can finally look beyond survival. "Now, we work with dignity and confidence," says Moussa. "The land produces, and we can plan for the future." For Zara, a mother of five, this has been life changing. “Now we sell more crops, feed our children, and live with dignity,” she says.

In the Lake Chad Basin, where the lake has shrunk by over 90% since the 1960s, where insecurity has intensified, where droughts and floods recur year after year, and where displacement and rising poverty have strained communities, being able to “plan for the future” is nothing short of transformative. The Lake Chad Region Recovery and Development Project (PROLAC), a World Bank-financed initiative designed in 2020 has reversed the situation across Cameroon, Chad, and Niger. In doing so, the project supports the World Bank Group’s AgriConnect and Water Forward initiatives and reflects the Great Green Wall's broader ambition to restoring land, creating jobs, and strengthening resilience across the Sahel.

Restoring Land, Reviving Livelihoods

The project has invested in productive assets that sustain rural livelihoods. Across the three participating countries, it has rehabilitated irrigation systems, restored agricultural land, improved water management, supported value chains, and strengthened local infrastructure. It brought 33,231 hectares of land under better water and soil management, more than triple its original goal.

In Chad's polders, more than 2,400 hectares of polders have been rehabilitated, enabling farmers to cultivate land that had previously been neglected, and switching from diesel to solar irrigation cut water costs by 90%. In Mamdi, Brahim Wolli of Chad's National Producers Association reports that cultivated land has gone from 39% of capacity to 100%, with annual harvest value climbing from $3.5 million to $8 million. While neighboring Berim saw production rise from 400 tons to 8,000 tons.

In Niger’s Diffa region, where desert winds threaten fragile oases, communities are turning dune stabilization into both immediate income and long-term protection. By anchoring the sand today, they are safeguarding the fields, water points, and livelihoods their children will depend on tomorrow.

Across the project area, more than 131,000 farmers report improved harvests, while over 94% of beneficiaries say the project has met their needs. The 700 established community committees — nearly six times the original target — are the mechanism behind these numbers. Communities that help design investments protect them, which is a prerequisite in fragile settings.

Creating Jobs and Economic Opportunities

PROLAC has demonstrated how productive investments can simultaneously provide income, build infrastructure, and strengthen communities. Through public works programs and investments in agricultural value chains, the project has generated significant employment opportunities for local populations, including women, youth, displaced people, returnees, and host communities.

Across Cameroon, Chad, and Niger, PROLAC created an estimated 160,984 jobs including nearly 34,000 direct jobs through public works activities. More than 10,000 women and 27,000 young people participated in these efforts. Local stakeholders estimate that broader investments in agriculture, infrastructure, and value chains have supported hundreds of thousands of livelihood opportunities while helping household incomes more than triple. Beyond crop production, PROLAC has strengthened fishery, dairy, maize, wheat, spirulina, and market-gardening value chains. Community warehouses, rural markets, and new landing stages are helping producers store, process, and sell their goods more efficiently, creating lasting economic opportunities.

Connecting Communities and Markets

Farmers also need roads, markets, and transport networks to turn production into prosperity. Across the region, 286 kilometers of rural roads have been rehabilitated, including 66 kilometers in Chad. These roads now connect remote communities to markets, schools, health centers, and essential services. The improved connectivity is helping revive local economies while supporting cross-border trade throughout the Lake Chad Basin. Communities that were once isolated are increasingly reconnecting with neighboring regions, strengthening both economic activity and social ties.

Also more than 700 community committees have been established across project areas, enabling communities to identify priorities, oversee investments, and help maintain infrastructure. This participatory approach has proven especially important in fragile environments, where trust, inclusion, and local engagement are essential for sustainable development.

Building Resilience Through Regional Cooperation

Many of the challenges facing the Lake Chad Basin requires a regional response. By supporting productive investments in Chad's polders, revitalizing oasis farming systems in Niger, and strengthening livelihoods in Cameroon's Far North Region, PROLAC has shown how regional cooperation can generate benefits that extend far beyond individual communities. The project is helping restore economic links, revive cross-border trade, and strengthen relationships among populations that share common challenges and opportunities.

Hyacinth Banseka, Technical Director of the Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC), notes, "PROLAC is more than a development project. It is a pathway to hope, stability, and dignity for communities around Lake Chad." PROLAC also strengthened regional coordination through the Lake Chad Information System, an LCBC-managed platform that supports data sharing and evidence-based decision-making while tracking over 2,000 projects, 25,000 activities, and serving more than 50,000 users each month.

For families like Moussa's and Zara's, those words reflect a reality that is increasingly taking shape across the basin. The return of water has restored far more than fields and crops. It has restored opportunity, confidence, and the possibility of a better future, while demonstrating what the World Bank's SP500 agenda is designed to scale: that restoring land, creating jobs, and rebuilding resilience in the world's most fragile places are not separate goals, but one and the same.

In a region long defined by hardship, this is the demonstration that with the right investments in people, infrastructure, and natural resources, recovery is possible, and resilience can become the foundation for lasting prosperity.