Lake Chad Basin Commission Lake Chad Basin Commission The Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC or CBLT in French) is an intergovernmental organization that oversees water and other natural resource usage in the basin. There are eight member governments—i.e., Cameroon, Chad, Niger, Nigeria, Algeria, the Central African Republic, Libya, and Sudan—chosen for their proximity to Lake Chad. The organization's secretariat is located in N'Djamena, Chad. The LCBC is Africa's oldest river or lake-basin organization. In its founding document (the Convention and Statutes relating to the Development of the Chad Basin) the parties commit themselves to a shared use of the basin's natural resources. It is
Niger far east as western Niger. The Kanem-Bornu Empire was an empire that existed in modern-day Chad, Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger and Libya. The empire first existed and prospered as the Kanem Empire as early as the 9th century and later as the Kingdom of Bornu until 1900. In the 19th century, contact with Europe began with the first European explorers—notably Monteil (French) and Barth (German)—to travel to Niger. Following the 1885 Berlin conference during which colonial powers outlined the division of Africa into colonial spheres, French military efforts to conquer existing African states were intensified in all French colonies including Niger.