Africa-Press – Gambia. Whatever you think about Elon Musk and his use of the US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) as a wrecking ball to tear down US government agencies, you have to admit that it is in the public interest to increase government efficiency. This is especially so in The Gambia because the government needs to increase its efficiency and transparency in use of resources.
The need to reduce government waste and increase efficiency in the use of financial resources is especially acute given the government’s increasing reliance on donor funding of The Gambia government’s expenses. Between 2019 and 2022, the donor contributions to the government’s budget increased (in inflation adjusted terms) 24.7 percent from D2.1 billion to D53.3 billion.
The reality now is that development assistance from Europe, the United States and international development organisations is getting less reliable and significantly reduced.
For example, Europe is now preoccupied with strengthening its security, and increasing defence spending by over €800 million in the wake of the on-going Russo-Ukraine war, meaning less of its aid to its developing countries. Similarly, the UK (a major development partner of The Gambia) will cut its international aid funding to increase its defence spending.
Just over three months in President Trump’s second term, many African countries (The Gambia included) are reeling from the impact of the cuts in aid delivered through the now disbanded US Agency for International Development (USAID). The US contributed US$13 billion (over 25 percent) of the overall budget of the UN in 2023. For this reason, the reduction in US funding for UN agencies will negatively impact the ability of these agencies to support governments all over the world, including those in Africa.
As a result, African governments will have to increasingly rely on local resources and reduce waste. This is especially so for The Gambia where donor grants to support the budget declined from D53.3 billion in 2019 to an estimated D13.6 billion, and D9 billion in 2023, and 2024, respectively.
One particular area in which government efficiency can be improved is the management of travel expenses, which can be broadly divided in the two parts: local and international travel. Both need to be better managed to reduce waste, increase efficiency of resource use, and increase the benefits they provide to government and The Gambian public. This article focuses on the issue of international travel, leaving domestic travel and transportation for later, in shaa Allah!
Although few Gambian public servants engage in international travel, the costs entailed are huge. Although government spending on travel increased (in nominal values) from D377.3 million in 2019 to D450.7 million in 2022, adjusted for inflation and using 2022 dalasis, spending on travel dropped D10 million over the same period. However, government travel spending is projected to reach D521.1 million and D540.2 million in 2025 and 2026, respectively.
In relative terms, government expenses on travel in 2019 (D377.3 million) was almost double its spending on training (D195.7 million), and 11 times its spending on vaccines (D33.3 million). In the same vein, the government travel spending in 2022 was over three times its spending on drugs, dressing and medical supplies (D148.9 million), and almost double (1.7 times) its spending on electricity, water and sewage (D264 million). Given increasing costs of travel, the need for spending more money on social sectors such as health and education, and reduced support from development partners, The Gambia Government clearly needs to review its spending on travel.
The first step in rationalising government travel expenses in The Gambia should be to develop a Travel Policy, similar to the National Travel Guideline of South Africa. International development finance organisations and United Nations (UN) agencies also have policies and guidelines on duty travel, including the payment of Daily Subsistence Allowances (DSA), commonly called per diem in The Gambia. For example, the World Bank, a major donor for development projects in The Gambia, has a staff manual and travel policy, just as UN agencies, including those which work in The Gambia, do.
A Gambia government travel policy should be aimed at increasing efficiencies, and reducing costs by eliminating or reducing waste. Toward this end, the travel policy should define criteria for authorising international travel for government officials. Such criteria would include how the travel serves the national interest, whether meetings can be attended remotely, and if the meeting organisers or others can fund the participation of the government official.
Furthermore, The Gambia Government should, like Kenya, use a competitive bidding process to identify a travel management company. The World Bank, for example, which spent US$285 million in air travel in 2019, uses various companies to manage its travel needs. These travel management companies will help the government leverage technologies such as travel management software, and expense monitoring tools which reduce travel expenses by 30 percent, and 15 percent, respectively.
The main reason many government officials embark on international travel is the relatively high per diems they are paid when they travel. According to sources, ministers are paid £300 per night when they travel on Gambia government-funded trips abroad. At the current exchange rate (April 24, 2025), a minister would thus earn D28,796 per night, meaning that the per diem for three days would be more than his or her monthly gross salary (D65,000). Furthermore, the per diem for a minister is four times the monthly gross salary (D7,105) of a graduate teacher in the North Bank Region.
Many officials reduce their expenses when they travel by staying with friends and relatives, instead of paying for hotel accommodation and food. This, in addition to the possibility of making multiple trips per month, means that many senior government officials are especially keen to embark on international travel to earn money, and not necessarily because such trips benefit the country.
One way to discourage the use of foreign travel as an extra source of income is to provide government officials credit cards to pay for their hotel accommodation and food on their travels. Where this is not possible, they should be provided funds to travel with, but they would be required to submit receipts of expenses on foreign trips. In that case, they would be required to refund any amount that is unspent, or have it deducted from their salaries, just as the UN does.
The government travel policy should also include a requirement to increase the benefits of official travel. In particular, the travel policy should aim for increasing knowledge sharing, resource mobilisation, partnership development, and the international profile of The Gambia. It should no longer be enough for government officials to attend international meetings, collect their per diems, and come home and sit down quietly. Instead, they should share what they learn in their travels with their colleagues.
In addition, government officials should increase the international profile of The Gambia by participating in the meetings they attend, and as much as possible, embedding themselves in the professional communities they work with on their travels. Government officials should, for example, volunteer to serve on the Committees or various organisations whose meetings they attend and offer to host their future meetings in The Gambia.
The government travel policy should also call for more transparency and accountability of government officials for their travels. For a start, government officials should be required to prepare meeting reports and give presentations on meetings they attended to their colleagues and other interested officials. Trip reports and presentations should be made no later than four weeks after officials return from their travels, and should include internet. and other sources of information about the meetings they attended. The requirement for government officials to give presentations on meetings they attended would not only encourage them to have more productive meetings, it would increase the benefits of the meetings by increasing knowledge sharing among government officials.
In 1989 or early 1990, I gave a presentation on the International Soil Conservation Conference (ISCO) I attended in Kenya and Ethiopia to my colleagues in the then Department of Agriculture to share information about the conference. And I used transparencies! Following my UNDP Ethiopia consulting assignment to help prepare an agriculture development project in 2019, I gave presentations at the National Agricultural Research Institute (NARI) and to the Commercial Farmers Agribusiness Network (CFAN) on the lessons The Gambia can learn from commercialisation of small-scale farmers in Ethiopia.
The management of official travel can be facilitated using a web portal which will have a travel database to help increase accountability and transparency, as Canada publishes government travel and hospitality expenses on its Open Government portal. The Gambia Government web portal can thus be used to track all travels by government officials (including costs, destinations, duration, meeting details, etc.), trip and financial reports and reporting (submission expense receipts, etc.), and should be accessible to the public.
The portal can also serve as a repository of reports and presentations on meetings attended by government officials. These would be accessible to the public, further increasing knowledge sharing, accountability and transparency. The portal can be used to generate monthly, quarterly and annual reports on travel by government officials, using templates that will pull data from the travel database.
The above are just a few features and benefits that a quality and properly implemented Gambia Government policy on official international travel can have. Fortunately, the time is ripe to prepare and implement such a policy because the technology exists to do so, it is generally affordable, worth the cost, and most likely can be developed locally. In addition, the benefits would be immense, and include reducing costs and waste, as well as increasing cost-effectiveness, knowledge sharing, accountability and transparency. Proper travel management can also help increase our resource-mobilisation opportunities, resources mobilised, and the international profile of The Gambia. And who knows, The Gambia might very well end up being a destination country for other countries on study tours about best practices in government travel management. That would be the day!
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