By Dr Lamin K Janneh
Africa-Press – Gambia. V. Institutional collapse: governance as ritual, not reality
Institutions in The Gambia have become sacred in name but hollow in function. Public service is no longer a mission; it is a mechanism for resource extraction. Procurement processes are opaque. Civil service appointments are political rewards. The judiciary, once envisioned as a pillar of transformation, operates under the shadow of political compromise.
Justice must cease to be a performance. It must become a function.
We propose the immediate establishment of a hybrid Anti-Corruption Tribunal, staffed by a mix of Gambian reformists and Ecowas or Ghanaian legal experts. This court must have prosecutorial authority over public procurement, illicit enrichment, and election finance violations. Immunity clauses must be revoked. No one, not even the president, should be above scrutiny.
To rebuild trust, the Gambia Public Procurement Authority (GPPA) must livestream all major tenders. Uganda’s e-GP system offers a model: live audits, public dashboards, and mobile-accessible records. The EU Governance Fund can be lobbied to underwrite this transition.
Biometric audits may sound futuristic, but without a stable power grid or digital literacy, they risk being exclusionary. Begin with analog reforms: mandatory monthly asset declarations displayed publicly in police stations, regional councils, and schools.
The Gambia Integrity Platform must serve as a citizen-owned watchdog. It should be housed outside the executive, possibly at the University of The Gambia’s law faculty, and run by civil society with legal backing. Students, journalists, and community elders must form its monitoring core.
Governance must no longer be the art of appearing accountable, it must become the science of being accountable. This should be funded by redirected cannabis taxes: 30% to mental health clinics and 70% to NYIB startup grants.
VI. Food and sovereignty: From dependency to dignity
In The Gambia, sovereignty cannot be declared if it cannot be eaten. Our dependence on imported rice, sugar, onions, and processed foods is not merely an economic deficit, it is a civilisational erosion. A hungry people are a captive people. To govern is to feed.
Agriculture employs over 70% of rural Gambians, yet contributes less than 25% to GDP. The root problem is not effort but infrastructure. Salinisation has destroyed 40% of rice paddies in the Lower River Region, as confirmed by the 2022 UNEP report. Climate change is no longer a threat, it is a reality. And yet, agricultural budgets remain below 4%, in violation of the Maputo Declaration.
We must pivot to Food Sovereignty Zones powered by solar irrigation, youth agri-cooperatives, and locally-managed seed banks. Benin’s model of 5,000 rural youth agri-coops with solar-powered storage hubs offers a scalable template. Rather than reinvent, we must replicate and refine.
Land redistribution is essential. Provide youth with long-term, collateralised leaseholds on unused public land. Link this with targeted finance from the NYIB and insurance-backed cooperative credit systems. Women-headed farms must receive 50% of new state subsidies to correct historic exclusion.
Make the school feeding programme sovereign. Mandate that 30% of ingredients are sourced from youth farms and local producers, creating instant demand and a guaranteed market.
Let every harvest remind us: true independence begins with the ability to feed one’s own children with dignity, from soil owned and defended by the people.
VII. The reform covenant: Policy blueprint 2026–2030
A nation without a plan is a prayer unanswered. The Gambia must now codify its civic resurrection through a time-bound, publicly monitored, and morally binding Reform Covenant. This is not a manifesto; it is an operational doctrine for state transformation.
‘Constitutional reform’
Convene a 24-month Constituent Assembly with 40% youth and 50% women delegates to redraft and ratify a new constitution.
Reintroduce term limits and lower candidacy age to 21 for local elections.
‘Governance reform’
Establish the Anti-Corruption Tribunal with regional legal experts (Ghana, Senegal) under ECOWAS observer oversight.
Public officials to declare assets quarterly, certified by independent audit bodies.
‘Youth-led development’
Launch NYIB with $28 million diaspora bond seeding; issue equity-based startup grants tied to community metrics.
Roll out 1-year TechCorps national service programme, mandatory for all tertiary-level entrants.
‘Mental health and justice’
Establish the National Mental Health Authority with trauma clinics in every region.
Legalise medical cannabis cultivation with export licenses and mental health tax levies (based on Lesotho model).
‘Diaspora & electoral reform’
Phase I: Diaspora vote limited to local council elections; Phase II (post-biometric registry): full participation by 2029.
Ratify the Rome Statute to enable ICC prosecution if TRRC crimes remain unpunished.
Every target in this covenant must be tracked in a national digital dashboard co-managed by CSOs and school-based civic clubs. Each reform must pass the solo-soldier test: if no party adopts it, will one citizen still defend it?
Reform must become the air we breathe, the currency of patriotism. We must legislate the republic our children will inherit, not the one we fear to leave behind. Automatic trigger: If no TRRC prosecutions are initiated by June 2025, case files transfer to ICC.
VIII. Visionary conclusion: Small state, great example
The Gambia’s size has too often been used as an excuse for irrelevance. But smallness is no disqualification for greatness. Singapore was smaller. Costa Rica had fewer resources. Rwanda faced deeper scars. Yet each chose principle over paralysis, and now command global respect.
Let us define greatness not by GDP, but by integrity. Let us measure our nation not by miles of tarmac but by the moral distance we travel from tyranny to truth.
MacCarthy Island, once a colonial outpost and later a prison, must now become a living museum of democratic rebirth. Its ruins should echo with stories of resistance and renaissance. Let it remind future generations that rebuilt fortresses can outlast dictators.
The world is watching. Our youth are marching. Our diaspora is ready. But leadership must ignite this moment, not extinguish it with cowardice.
Every Gambian leader must now answer a singular question: will you be remembered as a comma in the sentence of surrender, or the exclamation point in Gambia’s redemption epic? or as a paragraph in the prologue of national redemption?
The path to greatness begins when the smallest state becomes the continent’s most principled example. Rebuild its ruins as the Museum of Conscience, adjacent to Mile Two Prison’s torture chambers preserved as evidence.
IX. Epilogue: civic testament to the unborn
Let this document be read not as rhetoric but as a civic covenant, a solemn pledge from one generation to the next.
Imagine the year is 2030. A 16-year-old student in Kiank Kaiaf opens her civic studies textbook. She reads about a people who, though wounded by dictatorship and wearied by deception, rose with defiance and design. She studies a republic that refused to die quietly. She recites the oath engraved at the end of the chapter:
“We, the inheritors of independence and the authors of our future, vow to defend truth, protect dignity, and govern with courage, so help us history.”
To the unborn Gambian, we offer not perfection, but direction. Not promises, but purpose. May they say of us, not that we left them riches, but that we left them reasons to rise?|
Let Solo Sandeng’s reported last words echo into eternity: “If I die, I die for liberty.” In his name, in your name, in the name of every child yet to speak their first words rise. This is not the end. It is the ignition.
Source: The Standard Newspaper | Gambia
For More News And Analysis About Gambia Follow Africa-Press
