Tibesti, northern Chad—on the border with Libya and Niger—is one of the most remote regions in the world, mountainous and nestled in the heart of the Sahara, more than 2,000 kilometers (1,242 miles) from the nearest capital.
Yet it is a commercial crossroads of the desert, mostly informal, where human migration meets an anarchic, Wild West-style gold rush and goods of all types traveling through the sands.
This project will dig into how this crossroads works and how Chad is attempting to regain control of a region at the heart of the economic and security ecosystem of the Sahara, with the gold rush of the last 10 years upsetting the balance.
