Africa: Africa’s vanishing Lake Chad

As you approach the Lake Chad basin from Maiduguri, in northeastern Nigeria, the atmosphere of despair is telling. The air is dusty, the wind is fierce and unrelenting, the plants are wilting and the earth is turning into sand dunes. The sparse vegetation is occasionally broken by withered trees and shrubs. The lives of herders, fisherfolk and farmers are teetering on the edge as the lake dries up before their eyes. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has called the situation an 'ecological catastrophe', predicting that the lake could disappear this century.