Before you start

Your passport, and your national identification documents once ANATS has issued them
An unlocked handset; dual-SIM is standard practice with only two networks
An N'Djamena address for the registration form

Step-by-step

1
Buy at an operator agency, with your passport
Identification is not optional and the regulator has been enforcing it hard since 2025, tying subscriber records to the national identification number. Buy at a branded Airtel or Moov agency, watch your document be recorded, and keep the receipt. A card bought from a street table is registered to somebody else, and since your mobile money will hang off it, that is not something you can unwind later.
In personWho: YouUnder an hour at an agencyThe SIM is trivial; bundles are the real spend
2
Carry both networks
With only two operators and a city that spreads over ten arrondissements on both banks of the Chari, carrying both is close to standard. It costs very little and it removes an entire category of bad day — particularly for anyone whose work involves being reachable during a power cut, when the tower nearest you may be the one that is down.
In personWho: YouSame visitA second SIM and a small standing bundle
3
Set up mobile money and treat it as a bank account
Airtel Money and Moov Money handle payments, transfers and increasingly salaries in a country where formal banking reaches a small minority. Register in your own verified name against a SIM registered in your own name. That pairing is the whole of your protection, and in Chad it is now formally tied to the national identification number, which makes getting your ANATS documents an early priority rather than a later one.
Mobile appWho: YouMinutes at an agentFree to open; per-transaction fees
4
Budget for data, and for the power to use it
Chad is landlocked and its connectivity is expensive relative to income. Mobile bundles will not comfortably carry a household that works from home, and fixed options are limited and uneven. Ask what reaches a property before you sign a lease — and remember that in a city where outages are routine, the constraint on your internet is often the electricity rather than the bandwidth.
In personWho: YouDays to weeks for a fixed lineMaterially more than European prices for the same speed

Documents you’ll need

Passport, and your carte de séjour and national identification documents once you have them
An N'Djamena address for the registration form
Your registration receipt — keep it; re-identification campaigns happen

Things most newcomers don’t know

The regulator's position is that unidentified SIMs are a security question, not a commercial one.

Announcing strict controls from 5 May 2025, ARCEP's director-general said that security takes priority over the economic aspect and that those refusing to comply would have to pack up. The meeting that produced it involved ANATS and the security services alongside the two operators. When a rule is framed that way, enforcement arrives as a campaign rather than as a warning letter.

Source: ARCEP Tchad, 30 April 2025

Your SIM is keyed to your national identification number, which keys everything else.

Verification runs against the Numéro National d'Identification, issued by ANATS — the same agency that issues your passport, your identity card and your driving licence. Getting into that system early is what makes the phone, the wallet and eventually the licence work; staying outside it makes each one a separate fight.

Source: ARCEP identification drive; ANATS secure documents

The market more than doubled in five years, which is why the rules are catching up now.

Mobile subscriptions in Chad went from about 5.94 million in January 2020 to roughly 14.5 million in January 2025. Identification obligations written for a much smaller market are being enforced against a much larger one, which is exactly the sort of transition where a line bought casually in 2024 gets cut in 2026.

Source: Chadian mobile subscription figures, January 2020 to January 2025

Two operators means no third option when one has a bad month.

Airtel and Moov are the whole market. There is no third network to switch to, and the regulator has previously issued a formal notice to an operator after a network outage of more than five hours. Carrying both SIMs is not belt-and-braces here; it is the only redundancy available.

Source: ARCEP Tchad regulatory actions

Common mistakes to avoid

Buying a pre-registered SIM from a street vendor and attaching your money to it
Delaying your ANATS identification documents, which now gate the phone and the wallet
Carrying one network in a two-network market
Budgeting Chadian data at European prices
Forgetting that your home internet depends on your generator, not on your bandwidth

Some of this may be out of date. Spotted something inaccurate? Help us keep it right for the next newcomer.