Chad has reestablished its military relationship with France nearly 18 months after demanding that French forces leave the country in a dispute over intelligence-sharing in the Lake Chad Basin.
French troops returned to Chad in April with a focus on training, intelligence gathering and limited deployments. This is designed to respond to Chad’s needs as it confronts Boko Haram and the Islamic State West African Province in the Lake Chad region and potential security issues along its eastern border with Sudan.
“Chadian observers regard this rapprochement as reflecting a mutual desire to preserve channels of security and military cooperation, while accounting for the political and regional shifts that have reshaped the nature of relations between France and a number of Sahel states in recent years,” analyst Hassan Yusuf Zarma wrote recently for The Brown Land, an independent Sudanese news site.
Under the agreement, France has no plans to establish permanent military bases in Chad.
“France is trying to rebuild military cooperation with Chad, but not in the old format,” analyst Aleksander Olech wrote for Defense24. “This is not a full French comeback in Chad. It is a cautious attempt to return through the side door, with fewer soldiers, less visibility and more dependence on Chadian political consent.”
Chadian officials expelled 1,000 French Soldiers in January 2025 as anti-French sentiment swept through the Sahel. The departure ended 65 years of French military presence in the country. At the time, French officials said the change was not the end of military cooperation with Chad.
The turn against France was fueled in part by Russian propaganda, according to analysts. After France’s departure, Chad turned to Russia, Türkiye and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for assistance but quickly ran into trouble with all three, according to the French newspaper Le Monde.
The inability of Russia’s Africa Corps mercenaries to subdue insurgents in Mali dissuaded Chadian leaders from working with them. Türkiye’s ANKA-S and Aksungur attack drones, supplied by Turkish Aerospace Industries in 2024, have proved too expensive for Chad to operate. UAE support for Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which included supplying the paramilitary through an airport on Chadian territory, made them an unattractive partner. The UAE denies supporting the RSF.
As France returns to Chad, the first area of cooperation is likely to be in air support, according to Olech.
“Since the French departure, Chad has struggled with rapid medical evacuation, air support for ground forces and intelligence collection. These are exactly the areas where French assistance previously mattered,” Olech wrote.
Along with training, exercises and intelligence-gathering support, France and Chad have discussed the possibility of the Chadian military buying French helicopters and aircraft.
The revised agreement might give France the ability to conduct air operations from its former Sergeant Adji Kosseï base in the Chadian capital, N’Djamena. Adji Kosseï was the last French base turned over to Chad as part of the 2025 withdrawal.
“This would give Paris a useful point of support in central Africa without reproducing the old base model that became politically toxic in the Sahel,” Olech wrote.