Connectivity for Refugees: Connected Centres in Eastern Chad

Chad hosts roughly 1.5 million refugees, most of whom have fled the war in neighbouring Sudan and settled in the arid Ouaddaï region on the eastern border. Camps and settlements there, including Djabal, Farchana, Idrimi and Oure Cassoni, have historically had only thin, expensive connectivity.
Since 2023, UNHCR, the ITU and the GSMA — together with Luxembourg-funded Emergency.LU satellite backhaul and the mobile operators Airtel Chad and Moov Africa — have built four 'connected centres' in these settlements under the global Connectivity for Refugees initiative, giving refugees and host communities shared access to the internet for education, financial services and healthcare. A joint field mission and centre visit took place in October-November 2025.
GSMA's own reporting puts the scale of the connectivity gap in context: although 85% of refugees in Chad live within some 2G coverage, only 1-3% have access to 4G, and only around 13% of people in Chad actively use mobile money — well below the roughly 55% seen in neighbouring Cameroon. High device costs, low literacy, fragile infrastructure and heavy taxation on telecoms and handsets are cited as the main barriers operators face in extending service further.
As of the most recent reporting, the initiative remains in a fundraising and scaling phase: UNHCR and GSMA are seeking at least $20 million in core support and $200 million in wider investment to expand the connected-centres model, with a global target of reaching 20 million forcibly displaced people and host communities by 2030. No public figures yet quantify how many people have used the four Chad centres or how many SIM cards or devices have been distributed there.

Read the full analysis: https://www.unhcr.org/us/news/press-releases/chad-s-fragile-sudan-border-un-and-partners-redouble-connectivity-drive