Elite Traveler Summer 2022

LEADERS IN LUXURY

by Roberta Naas

From top Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim is working with more than 200 di ff erent ethnic groups of Chad to create important maps; Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim

WATCHES Born into a nomadic lifestyle among the Mbororo people in the country of Chad in North-Central Africa, Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim is working with local tribe leaders to map the country’s resources, help mitigate con fl ict and demonstrate how to live in harmony with nature. Here, she shares her story with Elite Traveler ’s Roberta Naas and explains how Rolex’s Awards for Enterprise helps her achieve her goals.

For the past 45-plus years, Rolex has supported courageous individuals through its Rolex Awards for Enterprise, helping the recipients with their extraordinary (albeit challenging) projects that are designed to advance education, culture, health, and awareness and understanding of environmental issues. Last year, the top Swiss watch brand recognized fi ve laureates, including Hindou Oumarou Hindou Ibrahim Rolex Awards for Enterprise Laureate

Ibrahim, a young Chad-born woman whose work to map the natural resources of Chad, one of the world’s most climate-challenged lake regions, is helping to make a huge di ff erence in human culture and con fl ict. Living in a fi rst-world country, we take many things for granted, even the fact that we have digital maps of the world right on our phones. Mapping is a powerful tool that helps structure, track and visualize nature’s resources, water sources, and man-made towns, hospitals and schools. In the poor, landlocked country of Chad, where the nomadic people live and move, and where Lake Chad — which has shrunk by 90% of its original size since the 1960s due to climate change and