Paper short abstract:

This paper seizes the use and misuses of oil revenues in Chad by the State in order to address the social, economic and political challenges during a decade of oil extraction.

Paper long abstract:

The discovery and then the exploitation of oil in Chad for over a decade are transforming its society and its regime. There was a hope that oil extraction will let to sustainable development and Chad will use oil revenues to solve social, economic and security challenges.

The existing rentier management policies introduced by the State and international organizations should bring Chad in theory out of poverty and the structural violence that has affected it for more than half a century now.

This paper attempts to review the transformations that Chad is going through during the oil exploitation era. The framework of the rentier state (Beblawi and Luciani, 1987) and petro-developmental state (Ovadia, 2016) will be used to assess the transformation process. The framework refers to the fact that the state in resource-rich countries is the main stakeholder and is responsible for promoting sustainable developmental policies and local content for the benefit of its society.

The findings show that the management of oil revenues resulted in poor socio-economic outcomes. The unexpected results of this oil extraction are that the state is getting stronger with oil resources while poverty and insecurity are on the rise.

This work highlights the paradoxical and critical impacts of the use and misuses of oil revenue in Chad at various scales mainly local and international through the framework of the rentier and petro-developmental state theories which put States and their policies first.