See Lake Chad

Lake Chad (in French Lac Tchad) is a historically large, shallow lake in Africa, whose size has varied over the centuries. According to the UN it shrank as much as by 95 percent from about 1963 to 1998 yet they also state that "The 2007 (satellite) image shows significant improvement over previous years". Lake Chad is economically important, providing water to more than 20 million people living in the four countries that surround it on the edge of the Sahara Desert.