By Ebrima Ceesay
In 2013, an analysis of The Gambia’s population I wrote described the Gambia as a country undergoing a profound demographic transition: a growing population, rapid movement from rural to urban areas, changing age structures and a gradual evolution in the relative size and geographic distribution of the Gambia’s major ethnic communities.
Much of that description remains recognisable today. But the 2024 Population and Housing Census shows that the transformation has gone considerably further.
The Gambia is now a country of 2.42 million people, with population increasingly concentrated in the Greater Banjul and West Coast corridor.
Brikama alone accounts for 47.5 per cent of the national population, while Brikama and Kanifing together account for 63.2 per cent. The Gambia also remains remarkably young: 40.8 per cent of the population is under 15, while 56.2 per cent is between 15 and 64.
These are not merely demographic statistics. They provide important context for understanding the electoral landscape that will confront Gambians on 5th December 2026.
But there is an important qualification. Population geography is not voting behaviour. The census tells us where people live and how the population is composed. Elections tell us how voters choose. The two maps overlap, but they are not interchangeable. That distinction is particularly important in a country where political alliances have changed significantly since the last presidential election.
The December 2026 presidential election will therefore be fought against a demographic map that is different from the one that existed in December 2021 – and against a political map that is different from both.
The Gambia is a country that has moved. The demographic trend identified more than a decade ago has continued: population growth has been accompanied by a concentration of people in the Gambia’s western (West Coast Region) and urban areas.
The 2024 census records a national population of 2,422,712 people. Brikama is by far the largest Local Government Area, accounting for 47.5 per cent of the national population. Kanifing adds another 15.7 per cent, meaning that the two LGAs together account for 63.2 per cent of the Gambia’s population.
This concentration matters because the political geography of The Gambia has traditionally been discussed through regions, divisions and historic strongholds. Those categories remain useful, but they increasingly need to be supplemented by an understanding of the Gambia’s urban and peri-urban population.
The demographic centre of gravity is no longer simply a question of where the Gambia’s administrative regions are located. It is also a question of where the largest concentrations of Gambians now live.
That does not make rural Gambia politically unimportant. Far from it. The census shows substantial populations in Kerewan, Kuntaur, Janjangbureh and Basse, while these areas retain distinctive demographic structures and important agricultural economies.
But the sheer size of the population in Brikama and Kanifing means that developments in the urban and peri-urban belt have become increasingly difficult for any national political coalition to ignore.
The demographic transition also has an age dimension. The 2024 census describes a predominantly youthful population: 40.8 per cent are under 15, compared with only 3.0 per cent aged 65 and above.
The working-age population, defined as 15 to 64, represents 56.2 per cent. Banjul and Kanifing have relatively smaller proportions of children under 15 – 30.0 and 34.2 per cent respectively, while Kuntaur and Basse have considerably younger populations, at 47.9 and 46.7 per cent under 15.
The implication is not that young people will vote in a particular way. There is no basis for such a conclusion from the census. The more defensible observation is that the Gambia’s demographic structure is creating an increasingly large generation of young Gambians entering adulthood, employment, political participation and, eventually, the electorate.
For political parties, that create questions about employment, education, housing, transport, health, the cost of living and access to economic opportunity. Those questions are political rather than purely demographic.
The ethnic map: continuity and change
The 2024 census also provides an opportunity to revisit one of the central observations in my 2013 analysis: the persistence of The Gambia’s broad ethnic hierarchy.
At national level, the Mandinka remain the largest ethnic group, accounting for 34.4 per cent of the population in the census table, followed by the Fula at 25.0 per cent and the Wolof at 15.4 per cent.
Jola account for 9.5 per cent and Sarahulé 8.2 per cent. Serere account for 2.9 per cent, Manjago 1.7 per cent and Bambara 1.2 per cent, with other groups making up the remainder.
Brikama has the largest population of Mandinka representing 40.3 per cent of the LGA, although Mansakonko has got the highest concentration with Mandinka constituting 50.6 per cent of the LGA.
In fact, since 1983, Brikama (West Coast Region) has become the Mandinka heartland, but in the immediate aftermath of Independence in 1965, Mansakonko (Lower River Division as it was called then) used to be the stronghold of the Mandinka population. The Fula still remain the largest ethnic group in Kuntaur, Janjangbureh and Basse.
The national ranking therefore retains considerable continuity. But the more revealing story is geographic. The ethnic composition of the eight LGAs varies substantially.
Now, to be precise, in Brikama, Mandinka account for 40.3 per cent of the population, followed by Fula at 21.0 per cent, Jola at 14.8 per cent and Wolof at 12.0 per cent.
Kanifing is considerably more mixed: Mandinka account for 31.5 per cent, Fula 18.5 per cent, Jola 14.8 per cent and Wolof 14.1 per cent.
Mansakonko has a much stronger Mandinka-Fula concentration, with Mandinka at 50.6 per cent and Fula at 35.8 per cent.
Kerewan presents a different picture, with Wolof accounting for 34.6 per cent, Mandinka 27.2 per cent and Fula 22.5 per cent.
In Kuntaur, Fula account for 41.7 per cent and Wolof 34.5 per cent, while Mandinka account for 21.9 per cent.
Janjangbureh has a similarly substantial Fula presence at 41.5 per cent, followed by Wolof at 27.5 per cent and Mandinka at 22.8 per cent.
Basse is distinctive again: Sarahulé constitute 37.1 per cent, Fula 32.6 per cent and Mandinka 28.3 per cent.
Banjul itself is highly mixed, with Fula at 24.7 per cent, Wolof at 24.5 per cent and Mandinka at 20.2 per cent.
This is an important departure from simplistic descriptions of The Gambia as a collection of fixed ethnic territories.
There are certainly areas where particular communities constitute large proportions of the population. But the national picture is increasingly one of overlapping demographic communities, particularly in the Gambia’s most populous urban and peri-urban areas.
And that matters electorally. Not because ethnicity determines votes, but because political parties operating in a geographically diverse country have to build support across communities that often live side by side.
The crucial distinction: ethnicity is not an electoral result
There is a temptation, particularly during elections, to turn a demographic map into a political map. That would be a mistake.
If an LGA has a large Mandinka population, that does not establish how Mandinka voters will vote. The same applies to Fula, Wolof, Jola, Sarahulé or any other community. The 2024 census contains no information about party preference or presidential voting. Indeed, the electoral record itself demonstrates why ethnic determinism is inadequate.
The 2021 presidential election produced a national result in which Adama Barrow received 53.23 per cent, Ousainou Darboe 27.72 per cent, Mamma Kandeh 12.32 per cent and Essa Faal 2.00 per cent, with the remaining votes divided among other candidates.
The official IEC results also show substantial variation between constituencies within the same broad geographic areas. That variation is precisely why the demographic and electoral maps need to be examined together rather than substituted for one another.
A better question is not “Which ethnic group lives here?” It is “What is the demographic structure of this place, how has it voted historically, and what political changes have occurred since the last election?” That produces a much more useful electoral analysis.
From the 2021 electoral map to the 2026 political map
The 2021 presidential election is an important baseline, but it is not a template for 2026. The political configuration has changed substantially.
Mamma Kandeh’s Gambia Democratic Congress (GDC) entered an alliance with President Adama Barrow’s National People’s Party (NPP) in July 2026. Mamma Kandeh described it as an alliance rather than the dissolution of the GDC into the NPP.
In September 2026, Essa Faal and his APP-Sobeyaa party formally sealed an alliance with the NPP. The terms of the agreement were not publicly disclosed in the reporting available at the time, and there was opposition within Essa Faal’s political camp to the move.
These developments materially change the interpretation of the 2021 presidential election results. In 2021, Mamma Kandeh and Essa Faal were presidential candidates competing against Adama Barrow. In 2026, their political organisations are aligned with Adama Barrow. But an alliance should not be treated as a mathematical transfer of votes.
The fact that a candidate or party leader changes alliances does not establish that every previous supporter will follow.
There are several possible layers to any such transfer: personal loyalty, party organisation, local structures, campaign mobilisation, policy agreement, candidate appeal and the willingness of previous supporters to accept the new arrangement.
This is particularly relevant in constituencies where the GDC had previously built significant support. The 2026 question is therefore not simply how large Mamma Kandeh’s or Essa Faal’s previous vote was.
It is how much of the political organisation, local support and voter allegiance associated with those movements survives the change in political alignment. That is a much harder question, and one that cannot be answered simply by adding percentages from the 2021 presidential election.
What does the Gambia Participates August 2026 poll tell us and what it does not
The most comprehensive publicly available 2026 opinion survey identified in this analysis was Gambia Participates second-round poll, conducted from July 27 to August 10 among 1,556 registered voters across all 53 constituencies.
The poll reported voting intention of Adama Barrow – 32 per cent; Ousainu Darboe – 25 per cent; Talib Bensouda -19 per cent; Essa Faal – 3 per cent; Mamma Kandeh – 2 per cent; Others – 2 per cent; and Undecided – 17 per cent.
The regional distribution was also significant. Reporting on the poll indicated stronger Barrow results in the Upper and Central River areas, stronger Darboe results in North Bank and Lower River, and stronger Bensouda performance in the urban West Coast and Kanifing areas.
But the timing is critical. The fieldwork ended on 10 August 2026. Mamma Kandeh’s alliance with Adama Barrow had been formalised in late July 2026, but Essa Faal’s alliance was not formally sealed until 27 September 2026. The poll therefore cannot be treated as a measurement of the fully consolidated political configuration now visible at the end of September.
Nor should the poll be treated as a forecast. Gambia Participates itself describes the exercise as a snapshot of public sentiment and explicitly cautions against overstating what an opinion poll can establish.
The 17 per cent undecided figure is particularly important in this respect. The undecided voters are not a bloc that can simply be assigned to one political alliance. Nor is there sufficient evidence to assume that they will move uniformly in one direction.
The same caution applies to claims made by political actors about the poll. Barrow and Faal have publicly expressed confidence in the alliance, with Faal going as far as declaring that Barrow had already won. Such statements are political claims, not evidence of an electoral outcome.
The demographic-electoral intersection
Once the census and election data are placed alongside one another, a more complex picture emerges. The most consequential areas are not necessarily those that fit neatly into an ethnic or partisan category. They are places where population size, demographic diversity, previous electoral competition and current political realignment intersect.
The Greater Banjul and West Coast Region corridor is an obvious example. Brikama and Kanifing together contain almost two-thirds of the national population. Both are ethnically diverse, and both contain large numbers of voters living in rapidly expanding urban and peri-urban environments.
The August 2026 poll also placed Talib Bensouda in a strong position in Kanifing and Brikama, illustrating how a newer political force can find support in areas where the electorate is demographically mixed and where traditional political identities may not completely explain contemporary voting intentions.
But these areas also contain constituencies with very different electoral histories. That is why “urban vote” should not be treated as a single political category.
Kanifing is not one constituency. Brikama is not one constituency. The voters of Bakau, Brikama North, Brikama South, Kombo East, Busumbala and surrounding constituencies do not necessarily have identical political histories or preferences.
The same principle applies in the rural interior. Mansakonko, Kerewan, Kuntaur, Janjangbureh and Basse have different ethnic compositions, different demographic structures and different electoral histories. The census therefore gives us context, while the IEC results provide the actual electoral record.
10 places worth watching ahead of the 2026 presidential election
A useful way to understand the 2026 presidential contest is therefore not to produce a ranking of “safe” and “swing” constituencies, but to identify places where several variables intersect.
Bakau is important because of its historical competitiveness and its position within the urban electorate.
Brikama North sits inside The Gambia’s largest Local Government Authority (LGA) and has previously shown substantial competition between the major political forces.
Brikama South is particularly relevant to the question of whether previous GDC support can be transferred into the NPP-led alliance.
Kombo East provides another test of how previous three-way competition translates into the new political configuration.
Busumbala is important because the 2021 presidential election result showed a relatively close contest between the principal candidates.
Central Baddibu and Sami are useful tests of whether historically competitive constituencies retain similar political balances.
Kiang East and Kiang West are important for understanding the durability of historically strong UDP support.
Foñi Bintang and Jimara provide two different ways of examining the Mamma Kandeh question: Foñi because of Mamma Kandeh’s historically significant support there, and Jimara because of the political connection between Mamma Kandeh and Adama Barrow and Adama Barrow’s historically strong performance in parts of the Upper River area.
These constituencies should not be described as predetermined battlegrounds. Rather, they are useful observational points: places where changes in alliances, historical voting patterns and demographic context can be tested against one another.
The Mamma Kandeh question
Few developments illustrate the difference between electoral arithmetic and political reality better than the Kandeh-NPP alliance. Mamma Kandeh won 12.32 per cent nationally in 2021. It would be tempting to assume that this represents a transferable electoral asset. But the relevant question is not whether 12.32 per cent exists on paper.
The relevant question is whether the voters who supported Mamma Kandeh in 2021 continue to identify with his political leadership strongly enough to follow his new alliance.
There is also a geographic question. Mamma Kandeh’s support was not distributed uniformly across The Gambia. Kandeh’s strongest 2021 results were concentrated in particular areas, including parts of Foñi and the Upper River region.
Consequently, if the alliance produces meaningful electoral change, it may first become visible in those places where the GDC previously had organisational depth. But even there, the result will depend on more than the leader’s endorsement.
Local candidates, community relationships, campaign activity, competing political loyalties and the views of individual voters all matter. This is why the period between the alliance agreements and election day should be understood as a vote-transfer and mobilisation phase, rather than assuming that the transfer has already occurred.
The urban question
If there is one demographic development that deserves greater attention in the 2026 presidential election, it is the growth and concentration of the urban and peri-urban population. The 2024 census does not say how these voters will vote. It does, however, show the enormous scale of the population concentrated in Brikama and Kanifing.
It also shows that these populations are ethnically diverse. That matters because urban political competition can involve issues that cut across traditional geographic identities: employment, electricity, housing, transport, roads, flooding, sanitation, education, health services and the cost of living.
The August 2026 poll reinforces the relevance of these questions. It found the economy and cost of living among the issues respondents expected to influence their decisions, alongside security and healthcare.
Recent events have also demonstrated how quickly an issue can acquire political salience. In September 2026, protests over prolonged electricity outages occurred in and around the capital and other locations, highlighting the political sensitivity of basic service delivery ahead of the election.
None of this tells us how voters will ultimately choose. It does, however, help explain why the demographic transformation described in 2013 is politically significant in 2026.
Yet, the rural question has not disappeared. The danger of focusing too heavily on urbanisation is that it can produce the opposite distortion: treating the rural interior as an electoral relic. The census does not support that conclusion.
Kuntaur, Janjangbureh and Basse have younger populations than Banjul and Kanifing, while their ethnic compositions are distinct from the western urban corridor. The economic structures are also different. The census reports that agricultural participation is substantially higher in Mansakonko, Kerewan, Kuntaur, Janjangbureh and Basse than in Banjul and Kanifing.
This means that the political concerns of the interior cannot simply be folded into an “urban versus rural” narrative. The 2026 electoral map is better understood as a collection of interconnected but different political economies. The urban belt has its own pressures. The agricultural interior has others. And migration means that the boundary between the two is increasingly porous.
A younger Gambia, but not necessarily a predictable electorate
The age structure deserves particular attention. A country in which 40.8 per cent of the population is under 15 years old will inevitably have a very different political and economic profile from the country described several decades ago.
But the demographic dividend is not automatic. A young population creates opportunities if employment, education, skills and productive economic activity expand alongside it. If they do not, the same demographic structure can create intense pressure on households, schools, labour markets and public services.
For the 2026 presidential election, the key point is not that young Gambians constitute a particular political bloc. They do not necessarily do so. Rather, the growing importance of younger voters places greater weight on issues that are likely to affect their economic prospects and quality of life.
The August 2026 poll’s finding that Talib Bensouda performed particularly strongly among younger respondents is therefore worth noting as a polling observation, but it should not be extrapolated into a general claim about how young Gambians will vote in December.
Which begs the question: What has changed since 2013? Looking back at the demographic analysis I wrote in 2013, several conclusions stand out. First, the basic population trend has continued. The Gambia has become more populous and more concentrated in the western urban and peri-urban belt.
Second, Mandinka remain the largest ethnic community nationally, meaning that the broad hierarchy described in the earlier analysis has not been overturned.
Third, the geographic distribution is more important than the national ranking. Different Local Government Authorities now display markedly different demographic profiles, from the Mandinka-Fula concentration of Mansakonko to the Wolof-Mandinka-Fula mix in Kerewan, the Fula-Wolof concentration in Kuntaur and Janjangbureh, and the Sarahulé-Fula-Mandinka composition of Basse.
Fourth, urbanisation has altered the scale of the political centre of gravity. Brikama and Kanifing together now account for 63.2 per cent of the national population.
Fifth, the electorate cannot be understood through ethnicity alone. Actual electoral results show considerable constituency-level variation, while the political alliances of 2026 have rearranged several of the blocs that existed in 2021.
And finally, the political map is changing faster than a simple demographic map can capture.
The 2024 census describes the population. The 2021 presidential election describes one previous expression of voter behaviour. The August 2026 poll provides a snapshot of sentiment before the final alliance configuration had emerged. The December 2026 presidential election will provide the next actual measurement.
The map to watch between now and December
The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) has scheduled the presidential election for 5th December 2026. Nominations are scheduled for 26th October 2026 to 6th November 2026, campaigning for 10 November to 3rd December 2026, and a cooling-off day for 4 December 2026.
That timetable leaves a relatively short period in which the new political alliances will have to demonstrate whether they can translate leadership agreements into organisational and voter-level support.
Several questions will therefore be more informative than simple national polling numbers.
Will GDC supporters follow Kandeh into the NPP alliance? Will Essa Faal’s supporters accept the APP-Sobeyaa alliance with the NPP? How will voters who previously supported Mamma Kandeh or Essa Faal respond when faced with the new candidate configuration? Will Talib Bensouda retain the urban support recorded in the August poll? Will Ousainu Darboe consolidate the constituencies where the UDP has historically performed strongly? Will the large undecided segment recorded in August remain undecided, or will it increasingly coalesce around the principal candidates?
And, perhaps most importantly, will the political parties succeed in converting national alliances into credible local organisations across the 53 constituencies? These are questions that neither the census nor the August poll can answer by themselves. They will have to be answered by the campaign.
The electoral map is changing, but it is not predetermined. The Gambia approaching the December 2026 presidential election is not the same demographic country described in 2013.
It is larger. It is more urban and peri-urban. Its population is young. Its largest population concentration is overwhelmingly in Brikama and Kanifing. Its ethnic communities remain broadly recognisable in national terms, but their geographic distribution is more complex than a simple map of ethnic strongholds suggests.
And its political coalitions have undergone a major realignment since the 2021 presidential election. But none of these changes produces a predetermined electoral result. Demography creates the terrain; it does not cast the ballots. Ethnic composition provides social context; it does not determine individual choices.
Past election results provide evidence of political behaviour; they do not guarantee repetition. Polling measures opinion at a particular moment; it does not settle the result. And alliances create political structures; they do not automatically transfer every supporter from one leader to another.
The significance of the 2024 census, therefore, lies not in allowing us to predict how Gambians will vote by ethnicity or geography. Its significance is that it shows how profoundly the society in which the election is taking place has changed.
Thirteen years after the demographic picture described in 2013, the Gambia has moved further toward a population concentrated in the western urban corridor, while retaining substantial and politically important populations across the interior.
The 2026 presidential election will take place at the intersection of those two realities. The decisive analytical question is consequently not which ethnic group or region “owns” the election. It is how the competing political coalitions assemble support across a country whose population is increasingly urban, increasingly young, geographically concentrated, socially mixed and politically fluid. That is the changing electoral map of The Gambia.
Ebrima Ceesay is a leading Gambian academic based in the UK.
