An Uncertain Future on the Shores of Africa's Vanishing Lake
Lake Chad is a vital source of food, water, and income for increasing numbers of displaced people—and it's slowly turning to sand.
Korean-American photographer Jane Hahn has been based on the African continent for over ten years. She’s covered health crises, political violence and other humanitarian issues, and along the way, has run into a lot of troubling sights. One of the most disturbing experiences, Hahn recalls, was standing on a sand dune and realizing that 30 years ago the desert stretching far beyond her vision was covered in water.
In Chad, a landlocked country in north-central Africa, the widening Sahara desert, plus the Boko Haram crisis, has equaled a major threat to the ecosystem of the Chad River Basin. Lake Chad, located at the heart of the fragile basin, is a shallow freshwater lake that currently offers most of its
