Prime Minister Bernard Makuza will today represent President Paul Kagame at the swearing-in ceremony of Chadian President-Elect, Idriss Deby.

Deby was declared winner of the presidential elections held last April with a 88.66 percent margin..

He was a member of the panel of the five heads of state of the African Union (AU) in charge of finding a peaceful solution to the post-election crisis in Ivory Coast.

Under his rule, the nation has become an oil producer, but remains one of the poorest in the world.

A semi-desert country, Chad has vast gold and uranium deposits and stands to benefit from its recently-acquired status as an oil-exporting state.

It became an oil-producing nation in 2003 with the completion of a US$4 billion pipeline linking its oilfields to terminals on the Atlantic Ocean coast.

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