Beyond the Myth of a Dying Lake: How Farmers, Data, and Bayesian Science Are Reshaping Lake Chad’s Future

The ‘Sustainability of Agrarian Societies in the Lake Chad Basin’ project, supported by the British Academy/Wolfson Fellowships 2023, set out with a clear goal: to understand how farming communities around Lake Chad can endure mounting pressures from climate change, population growth, and insecurity. Its ambition is as practical as it is academic, producing rigorous evidence and data-driven recommendations to protect the livelihoods of millions who depend on one of Africa’s most complex ecosystems.

A major milestone in this effort took place recently in Abuja, where researchers, policymakers, and early-career scientists gathered for a workshop titled ‘Bayesian Statistics in Sustainability Science, with a Focus on Agrarian Societies and Ecosystem Services in the Lake Chad Basin’.

Challenging an Overworked Story

For decades, Lake Chad has been framed in global media as a vanishing lake—an emblem of environmental collapse. However, researchers working directly with farmers and fishers say that this narrative is incomplete and often misleading.

“By the end of the 1980s, the drought was so severe in the Sahel that Lake Chad had almost completely disappeared. But it came back. Since the mid-1990s, lake levels have fluctuated. It’s unstable, yes, but it is not disappearing,” the Lead Director of the project and Professor of Statistics at Rice University, Houston, Prof. Frederic Viens explained.

According to Viens, the real crisis today is not shrinking water, but uncertainty. “Farmers are not complaining about lake levels. They’re struggling with erratic rainfall—rains that start late, stop abruptly, or pause for weeks. That unpredictability is new, and that’s what they’re adapting to,” he said.

Building African Research Leadership
The Abuja workshop brought together 16–17 early-career scientists from Nigeria, Cameroon, and Zambia, spanning disciplines such as agriculture, soil science, geography, statistics, and sustainability science. Their shared aim: strengthening the scientific tools needed to support food security.

While Nigeria’s research capacity has grown, challenges include limited funding, restricted access to advanced analytical tools, and continued dependence on external expertise. This workshop sought to reverse that dynamic.

“We’ve assembled young Nigerians from diverse backgrounds. Some are lecturers, others early-career researchers. This is training the trainers. What they learn here will spread across institutions and regions,” the Registrar and CEO of the Nigerian Institute of Animal Science, Prof. Udo Herbert, said.

A defining feature of the Lake Chad project is its commitment to starting with farmers’ lived experiences. Researchers conducted large-scale surveys across Yobe and Borno States, interviewing more than 2,000 farmers and holding focus group discussions in local languages.

“We listen carefully. We speak Kanuri, we work through trusted enumerators, and we treat farmers with respect. That alone transforms the quality of data we collect,” Viens emphasised.

Early findings are already shaping practical interventions. One example is small-scale groundwater irrigation. Farmers know that maize crops often fail if rainfall stops during flowering. Access to wells or boreholes could save entire harvests.

But caution remains essential. “We need to know whether this is sustainable in the long term. In California, overuse of groundwater caused land subsidence. We don’t want that here. Fortunately, water use in northeast Nigeria is much lower, and small-scale irrigation is likely sustainable—but we want evidence, not assumptions,” Viens warned.

An Interconnected Ecosystem
Lake Chad is more than farmland; it is a tightly linked system of crops, livestock, and fisheries. Prof. Herbert stressed the importance of this systems perspective: “What affects crops will eventually affect livestock, and what affects livestock will affect fish. Climate change, insecurity, soil fertility—they’re all connected.”

From a regulatory standpoint, the project offers a crucial bridge between research and policy. “The findings will help guide government decisions,” Herbert said. “If pastoral movements change, if diseases emerge, if productivity shifts, we need empirical evidence to respond effectively.”

A soil scientist specialising in soil fertility and plant nutrition, Prof. Adam Lawan Ngala, a soil scientist specializing in soil fertility and plant nutrition, added that preliminary data suggest insecurity and insurgency may be just as influential as climate factors in reducing agricultural output—an insight with major implications for development planning.

Vision of Sustainability

Notably, the project does not define success solely by government adoption. Viens is candid about his priorities: “I’m far more interested in speaking directly to farmers. If we can mobilize support from private foundations and individuals, we can bypass layers of bureaucracy and make a tangible difference.”

That philosophy resonates with participants like Favour Eke-Okoro, an agronomist at the workshop. “Statistics will help us predict production more accurately and mitigate challenges. This is essential for precision agriculture in Nigeria. It can spark a movement,” he said.

What emerged in Abuja was more than a technical workshop, it was a reframing of sustainability itself. Not as a slogan, but as a practice rooted in data, humility, and listening.

Lake Chad’s future will not be secured by apocalyptic myths or one-size-fits-all solutions. It will depend on understanding uncertainty, respecting local knowledge, and empowering African scientists to lead their own research agendas.

As Prof. Viens put it simply: “They want to live the way they’ve always lived. Our job is to help them do that—under changing conditions—by understanding what’s really going on.”

In that sense, the most sustainable resource in the Lake Chad Basin may not be water or soil, but knowledge, carefully gathered, honestly analysed, and shared with those who need it most.