Africa/Ndjamena time zone

2:44PMWAT

WATUTC+1+6 h vs New York (you)

No transitions: Africa/Ndjamena stays on WAT (UTC+1).

About Africa/Ndjamena

Africa/Ndjamena is the IANA time zone for Chad. It currently keeps West Africa Time (WAT, UTC+1) all year.

Its principal location is Ndjamena at 12.12° N, 15.05° E.

Abbreviations in use: WAT. Offset page: UTC+1.

Rule for future years (POSIX TZ string)

WAT-1

The standard time is called WAT and is UTC+1. POSIX writes the offset with the opposite sign (west of Greenwich is positive), which is why the string says "-1". There is no daylight saving rule: the zone stays on this offset for every year after the end of its explicit transitions. Software that has no full tzdata copy, such as many embedded devices, can use this string directly as the TZ environment variable.

History of Africa/Ndjamena since 1970

The record starts with local mean time (UTC+1), which ended on December 31, 1911. The first daylight saving time in the record is in 1979.

YearsClocksAbbreviations
1970–1978UTC+1 all yearWAT
1979UTC+1 until October 14, then UTC+2WAT, WAST
1980UTC+2 until March 8, then UTC+1WAST, WAT
1981 onwardUTC+1 all yearWAT

tzdata commits to accuracy from 1970 for every zone (zone1970.tab); earlier entries are historical research and may be incomplete.

Aliases and zones with the same clock

Other zones that keep exactly the same time under the current rules (but have a different history): Africa/Algiers, Africa/Lagos, Africa/Tunis.

Places on Africa/Ndjamena

Convert Ndjamena time

Tip: Alt+↑/↓ steps the time by 15 minutes (Shift: one hour). The link keeps the date, time and direction.

Using Africa/Ndjamena in code

Every major platform reads the same IANA ID. Store instants in UTC and convert with the ID at display time; never store a fixed offset for a place that has daylight saving time.

// JavaScript
new Date().toLocaleString('en-US', { timeZone: 'Africa/Ndjamena' })

# Python 3.9+
from zoneinfo import ZoneInfo
from datetime import datetime
datetime.now(ZoneInfo('Africa/Ndjamena'))

// Java
java.time.ZonedDateTime.now(java.time.ZoneId.of("Africa/Ndjamena"))

// Go
loc, _ := time.LoadLocation("Africa/Ndjamena")
time.Now().In(loc)

-- PostgreSQL
SELECT now() AT TIME ZONE 'Africa/Ndjamena';

# Shell
TZ='Africa/Ndjamena' date

Platforms ship their own copy of tzdata and update it on their own schedule. After a rule change, outputs can differ until the platform updates; this page uses tzdata 2026f.

Questions

What is the UTC offset of Africa/Ndjamena?
UTC+1 all year.
Does Africa/Ndjamena observe daylight saving time?
No, not under the current rules. The last year with daylight saving time in its record is 1979.
Which countries use Africa/Ndjamena?
Chad, according to zone1970.tab in tzdata.

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