The design is based on the Tricolor design of France, the former colonial power, and was made official in 1959, the year before independence. Blue represents the sky, Lake Chad, and the southern agricultural regions where many black people live, yellow, the sun, the deserts, northern Arab, and the livestock farming region of the Tuareg people, and red, national unity, and people's determination for progress. The Chad national flag is almost the same as the Romanian flag in terms of both color and design, but the blue is slightly darker in the Chad flag.