PROLAC — Lake Chad Basin Recovery and Development Project

The Lake Chad Region Recovery and Development Project (PROLAC) was launched in 2020 by the governments of Cameroon, Chad and Niger together with the World Bank (through IDA) and the Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC), as the $170M core of a wider $346M support package addressing the collapse of livelihoods and ecosystems around a lake that has shrunk drastically since the 1960s, compounded by drought and conflict-driven displacement.
Activities include rehabilitating shared water basins and agricultural polders, installing irrigation systems and boreholes, and distributing seeds and equipment to farmers — supporting oasis agriculture in Niger, polder farming in Chad, and shoreline farming in Cameroon's Far North — coordinated through a joint data platform hosted at the LCBC.
World Bank reporting states the project directly supported more than 434,000 people within its first five years and contributed to climate-resilient agriculture and livelihoods for 1.5 million people overall, with women's harvests in supported areas more than doubling compared with two years earlier. These figures come from the implementing institutions themselves; no independent third-party impact evaluation was found, so outcome claims should be read as programme-reported rather than externally verified.

Read the full analysis: https://cblt.org/prolac-project/