The Gambia today stands at a defining moment in its national history. It is a country blessed with peace-loving people, strategic geographical location, fertile land, a navigable river, an attractive coastline, cultural diversity, youthful population and enormous economic potential. Yet, despite these blessings, the country continues to battle with development challenges that have, over time, shaken the very foundation of national progress.

More than six decades after independence, The Gambia still confronts many of the problems that confronted it at the dawn of self-government: inadequate infrastructure, unemployment, poverty, weak industrialisation, poor electricity supply, low agricultural productivity, youth migration, limited foreign investment, weak rural development, poor-quality education and an economy heavily dependent on imports and external assistance.

The most disturbing question, therefore, is not whether successive governments have made efforts. They certainly have. From Sir Dawda Kairaba Jawara through Yahya Jammeh to President Adama Barrow, every administration has initiated programmes, introduced policies and embarked upon development projects. Roads have been constructed, schools established, hospitals expanded, reforms undertaken and institutions created.

But the uncomfortable truth remains: their best efforts have not always produced the very best results for the country.

Why, after decades of political independence and several changes of government, does The Gambia continue to struggle with almost the same fundamental development problems?

Perhaps the answer lies in one uncomfortable reality: successive governments have often attempted to solve new and complex problems with old and familiar approaches. Different challenges have emerged in different historical periods, yet the policy responses have frequently remained predictable, fragmented and short-term.

The Gambia does not merely need more projects. It needs a new development philosophy. It needs a new national blueprint.

The burden of recurring development challenges

One of the greatest tragedies of development in The Gambia is the persistence of recurring problems. Governments change, ministers change, policies change and political slogans change, but many of the underlying structural challenges remain stubbornly intact.

This suggests that the country’s development problem is deeper than the performance of any single administration. It is fundamentally a question of national planning, institutional continuity, policy implementation and long-term vision.

Development cannot be reduced to the construction of a few roads, bridges, hospitals and government buildings. These are important, but development is much broader. Genuine development must transform the quality of human life. It must put food on the table, create jobs, provide electricity, improve education, stimulate production, strengthen institutions and restore hope in the future.

A country cannot claim meaningful development when thousands of its energetic young people see irregular migration as a better alternative to remaining at home.

It cannot celebrate economic growth when the ordinary citizen continues to struggle with high prices, unemployment and declining purchasing power.

It cannot speak of progress when businesses remain crippled by unreliable electricity and inadequate infrastructure.

The time has therefore come to confront the Gambian development question with honesty.

Infrastructure: the foundation that remains incomplete
Infrastructure remains one of the greatest obstacles to accelerated development. While significant improvements have been made in some areas, the country still suffers from inadequate and unevenly distributed infrastructure.

Road networks outside major urban centres require greater attention. Drainage systems remain inadequate in several communities. Access to clean water and sanitation continues to challenge many households. Urban congestion is increasing, while rapid population growth is placing enormous pressure on housing, transportation and public facilities.

Infrastructure should not be concentrated only around Greater Banjul and major commercial centres. National development must extend beyond the capital region.

The rural communities where agriculture is practised, where food is produced and where poverty is often more pronounced must not remain spectators in the development process.

A modern Gambia requires roads that connect farms to markets, electricity that reaches villages, water systems that support communities and irrigation infrastructure that transforms agriculture from seasonal survival to commercial production.

Infrastructure is not merely concrete and asphalt. It is an economic instrument. Good infrastructure reduces the cost of doing business, encourages investment, promotes tourism, connects communities and expands opportunities.

An economy that produces too little and imports too much
One of the most fundamental challenges confronting The Gambia is the structure of its economy.

The country consumes more than it produces.

A large proportion of essential commodities, including food items and manufactured goods, are imported. This exposes the economy to global price fluctuations, foreign exchange pressures and external economic shocks.

The question should no longer be how much The Gambia can import, but how much it can produce.

Economic transformation must become the central pillar of national development.

The Gambia needs an economy driven by agriculture, agro-processing, fisheries, tourism, technology, small and medium enterprises and manufacturing. It must deliberately move from being primarily a consumer economy to becoming a productive economy.

No country can achieve sustainable prosperity while depending permanently on imported goods that it has the capacity to produce.

The development blueprint of the future must therefore identify strategic sectors and invest heavily in them. Agriculture, fisheries, tourism, renewable energy and human capital development should become engines of national transformation.

The electricity question: Development cannot flourish in darkness
Reliable electricity is the heartbeat of a modern economy.

Factories need electricity. Hospitals need electricity. Schools need electricity. Hotels need electricity. Small businesses need electricity. Digital technology needs electricity.

Yet the persistent challenge of unstable power supply continues to affect households and businesses.

A country cannot industrialise in darkness.

A young entrepreneur cannot compete effectively when the cost of generating private electricity consumes a substantial part of business capital.

The electricity challenge must therefore be treated not simply as a public utility problem but as a national development emergency.

The future development blueprint should prioritise a diversified energy policy built around solar energy, wind power, regional energy cooperation and modern grid expansion.

The Gambia has abundant sunshine. It must begin to convert this natural blessing into economic power.

Renewable energy should not be treated as an alternative; it should become a central component of the national energy strategy.

Agriculture: from subsistence to food security and commercial production
Agriculture remains one of the most important sectors of the Gambian economy, yet its full potential has not been realised.

Low productivity, inadequate mechanisation, limited irrigation, poor access to finance, inadequate storage facilities and weak access to markets continue to affect farmers.

The result is paradoxical: a country with fertile land continues to import significant quantities of food.

Agriculture must be transformed from a subsistence occupation into a modern commercial enterprise.

The Gambian farmer requires more than encouragement. Farmers need tractors, irrigation facilities, improved seedlings, fertilisers, agricultural extension services, access to credit and guaranteed markets.

Young people should also be encouraged to see agriculture not as a punishment but as a profitable business.

The future of Gambian agriculture should be driven by technology.

Modern irrigation systems, agricultural research, mechanisation, food processing and storage facilities must become central components of national agricultural policy. Food security should become a national security priority. A hungry nation cannot be a stable nation.

Education without adequate skills
The quality of education is another major concern. Education should not merely produce certificate holders; it should produce problem solvers. A nation that produces thousands of graduates without creating opportunities for productive employment will inevitably create frustration. The Gambian educational system must therefore be redesigned to meet the demands of the twenty-first century.

Greater emphasis must be placed on science, technology, engineering, vocational education, entrepreneurship, agriculture and digital skills.

Technical and vocational education should receive the same national attention accorded conventional university education.

The country needs engineers, technicians, agricultural scientists, software developers, skilled artisans, medical professionals and entrepreneurs.

Education must be linked directly to national development needs.

Universities and institutions of higher learning should become centres of innovation and research capable of solving Gambian problems.

Research should not remain permanently on library shelves. It must be connected to agriculture, health, energy, the environment, governance and industry.

Unemployment and the tragedy of a restless youth population
The greatest resource of The Gambia is its young population.

But youth can become either a demographic dividend or a demographic disaster.

When young people are educated but unemployed, energetic but hopeless and talented but neglected, frustration becomes inevitable.

The high level of youth unemployment contributes directly to poverty, crime, social instability and illegal migration.

The phenomenon popularly known as “the back way” is perhaps one of the clearest indicators of the failure of the domestic economy to retain its young people.

No young person willingly abandons family, country and safety for the dangers of the Sahara Desert and the Mediterranean Sea without a compelling reason.

Illegal migration is therefore not merely an immigration problem.

It is a development problem.

It is an unemployment problem.

It is an economic problem.

It is a problem of hopelessness.

The solution must begin at home.

The Gambia must create an economy capable of giving its young people reasons to stay, work, invest and believe in their country.

Tourism without sufficient transformation
The Gambia is internationally recognised as a tourist destination, but its tourism potential remains far greater than what is presently being utilised.

Tourism must move beyond seasonal beach activities.

The country has history, culture, music, cuisine, wildlife, river tourism, eco-tourism and heritage resources capable of attracting visitors throughout the year.

The tourism industry must therefore be diversified.

Eco-tourism should be developed around communities and natural resources. Cultural festivals should be promoted internationally. Historical sites should be preserved and commercialised responsibly. River tourism should receive greater investment.

Tourism must also benefit local communities.

Hotels and resorts should increasingly source food, crafts and services from Gambian producers. This will create a stronger relationship between tourism and the local economy.

A tourism industry that imports most of what it consumes cannot fully transform the national economy.

The democratic bottleneck and weakness of institutional development
The restoration and consolidation of democratic governance remain important achievements, but democracy must produce more than elections.

Democracy must deliver development.

Citizens expect accountable leadership, functional institutions, justice, transparency and responsible management of public resources.

The Gambia must continue to strengthen its democratic institutions and ensure that national development does not depend entirely on the personality of whoever occupies the presidency.

Strong nations are built on strong institutions.

The civil service must be professional. Public institutions must be efficient. Anti-corruption mechanisms must be strengthened. National planning institutions must be protected from political interference.

Development policies should also survive changes of government.

One of Africa’s greatest development problems is policy discontinuity. A new government often abandons the programmes of its predecessor, not necessarily because the programmes are bad, but because they belong to another political administration.

The Gambia must rise above this culture.

National development should not belong to a political party.

It belongs to the nation.

To be continued tomorrow

The anger that spilled onto the streets of The Gambia on 7th September did not begin that morning. The burning tyres, blocked roads and confrontation with security forces were the visible expression of a frustration that had been building quietly inside homes, markets and businesses for months. The immediate trigger was prolonged electricity outages, with reports that some communities had gone without power for as long as 48 hours. In parts of the Greater Banjul Area and elsewhere, residents demanded answers from the National Water and Electricity Company, Nawec, while the police responded with tear gas in some locations. The streets may have quietened, but the underlying question remains: why does a country that has invested heavily in improving electricity access still struggle to provide a service that ordinary Gambians can reliably build their lives around?

That question cannot be answered simply by pointing to a failed generator, high temperatures, rising demand or maintenance problems. Those may explain the immediate outage, but they do not explain the vulnerability of the wider system. The deeper story is about a poor country attempting to modernise an electricity sector that has been structurally weak for decades, while the population has very little financial capacity to absorb the consequences when infrastructure fails. In The Gambia, electricity unreliability is not merely an inconvenience. It is an additional economic burden imposed on people whose incomes, businesses and household budgets are already fragile.

The historical context is important. When the Yahya Jammeh era ended in 2017 and Adama Barrow’s government took office, the electricity situation was among the most visible failures inherited by the new administration. Nawec was financially distressed, electricity generation was inadequate and much of the available equipment was old or unreliable. The World Bank recorded that available generation capacity in the Greater Banjul Area was only around 27 megawatts in October 2017, even though the country had significantly higher installed capacity on paper. Electricity was being produced far below what the system nominally possessed. Blackouts were so frequent that electricity became a daily source of frustration and one of the clearest symbols of the country’s infrastructural weakness.

The subsequent improvement was significant and should not be dismissed. Between 2017 and 2019, available capacity increased dramatically, reaching roughly 80 megawatts by October 2019 against peak demand of around 70 megawatts. The World Bank described the transformation as a move from approximately two or three hours of electricity per day in 2017 to almost continuous supply by 2019 and 2020. For ordinary Gambians, this was not an abstract development statistic. It meant businesses could operate for longer, households could plan their days with greater certainty and public services could function more normally. The improvement demonstrated that serious intervention could make a difference.

But it also created a new challenge that has received less attention: maintaining the gains after the emergency had passed.

The mistake would be to interpret the post-2017 improvement as proof that the electricity problem had been solved. In reality, much of the early effort was about stabilisation including bringing additional generation into service, improving supply and preventing an immediate collapse. Stabilisation was necessary, but it was not the same as building a resilient system. As more households gained access and economic activity increased, electricity demand also grew. The system therefore had to move from simply catching up with a historical deficit to continuously expanding capacity, maintaining equipment and strengthening the network as consumption increased.

This is where The Gambia’s economic limitations become critical. The country is poor, and the state operates within severe financial constraints. The African Development Bank has classified The Gambia as a low-income country, with gross national income per capita of around $830 in 2023. For households living on modest and often irregular incomes, there is little room for unexpected expenses. The same is true for the small businesses that dominate much of everyday economic activity. When electricity fails, these people cannot simply purchase expensive backup systems and carry on as if nothing happened.

A wealthy household can buy a generator. A large company can install solar panels, batteries and backup generators. A hotel can maintain its own power system. A small Gambian trader may have none of these options. This creates an important inequality in the electricity crisis: money buys resilience. Those who can afford alternative power can protect themselves from Nawec’s failures; those who cannot are forced to absorb them.

The hidden economic cost is therefore much larger than the value of the electricity that was not supplied. A vendor selling cold drinks needs refrigeration. A restaurant needs to preserve food. A tailor needs a sewing machine. A barber needs electric clippers. A welder needs power. A small office needs computers and internet equipment. A mother preparing porridge or another food product for sale may depend on electricity for preparation, storage or early-morning production. When the power disappears, the immediate loss may be small in national accounting terms, but for someone earning just enough to survive from one day to the next, losing one day’s income or stock can have consequences that continue long after the lights return.

This is the problem with viewing blackouts only as an energy-sector statistic. A megawatt that is unavailable at a generating plant is measurable. The income lost by thousands of small traders is not. The food discarded from household refrigerators is not. The business transactions that never occur are not. The hours of study lost by children in homes without alternative lighting are not. The fuel purchased by households to run generators is not normally counted as the cost of a blackout. Yet these losses accumulate, and in a low-income economy they can represent a meaningful drag on productivity and household welfare.

The financial structure of Nawec makes the problem even more difficult. Historically, the utility has faced high generation costs, dependence on expensive fuel, technical and commercial losses and weak financial performance. The World Bank has identified financial sustainability and system losses as continuing challenges, even as reforms have improved the utility’s position. This creates a difficult triangle between affordability, reliability and financial sustainability. If tariffs are too low, Nawec struggles to maintain infrastructure and invest. If tariffs rise sharply, poorer consumers face additional pressure. If government subsidies cover the gap indefinitely, the burden shifts to public finances.

There is no painless option. That is precisely why the sector requires structural reform rather than repeated emergency interventions.

One of the more successful elements of that reform has been regional electricity integration. Connecting The Gambia to regional power systems has allowed Nawec to access cheaper electricity than some domestic thermal generation. The World Bank says regional power integration has helped Nawec return to profitability and generated approximately 42 per cent in cost savings, partly through access to Guinea’s hydropower. This is an important achievement and demonstrates the economic value of regional cooperation.

But it also exposes another vulnerability. Cheaper electricity is not automatically more secure electricity. Dependence on regional supply can reduce costs while increasing exposure to disruptions outside the country’s direct control. Regional integration therefore needs to be accompanied by sufficient domestic reserve capacity. The strategic question is not whether The Gambia should import electricity; it should. The question is whether the country has enough alternatives when imported power or a major domestic generating unit becomes unavailable.

The move towards solar energy and battery storage is similarly promising but cannot be treated as a complete solution. The Gambia has invested in its first large-scale solar facility, including 23 megawatts of solar capacity, while battery storage and new transmission infrastructure are being developed. These investments can diversify the energy mix and reduce exposure to fuel prices. But generation is only one part of the electricity chain. Power still has to be transmitted, distributed and managed. A country can build a solar plant and still experience blackouts if its distribution network is weak or if it lacks sufficient capacity to balance supply and demand.

That is why the latest crisis is so revealing. Nawec has cited increased demand during the hot season, high temperatures and a technical incident affecting a major generating unit among the causes of the current disruption. These are reasonable explanations for what happened, but they also raise the more uncomfortable question of why a predictable seasonal increase in demand and the failure of one major unit can produce such severe consequences. Equipment will always fail. Demand will always fluctuate. The purpose of a resilient electricity system is to ensure that one failure does not become a national crisis.

The real weakness, therefore, may not be the absence of individual projects but the lack of sufficient redundancy across the system. The Gambia needs enough reserve generation, transmission capacity, storage and operational flexibility to absorb shocks. It needs maintenance that happens before equipment reaches crisis point rather than after failure. It needs accurate demand forecasting and stronger financial management. Most importantly, it needs to stop treating electricity shortages as isolated emergencies and start treating reliability as a measurable national economic objective.

The consequences extend beyond businesses and households. Nawec’s responsibility for both electricity and water means that instability in the power system can affect other essential services. Water pumping and treatment require energy, while hospitals and clinics depend on electricity for equipment, refrigeration and basic operations. Schools increasingly depend on electricity for lighting, computers and connectivity. Telecommunications and digital services are equally dependent on a stable energy supply. The electricity crisis therefore has a multiplier effect: when power fails, other systems begin to experience pressure.

Security also becomes more complicated during prolonged outages. Dark streets and markets reduce visibility and can make movement after dark more difficult for residents and security personnel. It would be irresponsible to claim that every blackout automatically causes crime, but prolonged darkness can weaken the basic conditions in which communities feel secure. In a country where public infrastructure is already limited, an extended outage can therefore create a sense that several essential systems are failing simultaneously.

This accumulation helps explain the political significance of 7th September. Electricity has become one of the most immediate ways citizens judge whether government is functioning. People may disagree about economic forecasts or development statistics, but they know when their businesses cannot operate and when their homes have no power. That makes Nawec particularly important as The Gambia approaches the 5th December, 2026 presidential election. President Barrow is seeking a third term, and opponents will inevitably use the electricity crisis as evidence of shortcomings in government performance.

Yet reducing the issue to electoral politics would be too easy. The electricity problem is older than the current administration, and the Barrow government can legitimately point to improvements in generation, regional integration, solar investment and access. At the same time, those achievements do not give the government an unlimited excuse for continued unreliability. An inherited problem eventually becomes the responsibility of the government that has had years to address it.

The most useful electoral question is therefore not who can most effectively blame Nawec or the government. It is who can offer a credible path from crisis management to resilience. Any party seeking power should be required to explain how it would finance Nawec, reduce losses, maintain infrastructure, diversify generation, manage regional dependence and protect poor consumers while improving reliability. Promising uninterrupted electricity without explaining how the system will be financed is not a policy. It is an election slogan.

The September protests should consequently be understood as a warning rather than simply an isolated episode of public anger. They demonstrate what happens when infrastructure failure becomes an economic burden for people who have little capacity to absorb it. In a poor country, electricity unreliability can quietly deepen poverty because every outage forces households and businesses to spend scarce resources compensating for a public-system weakness.

That is the central contradiction facing The Gambia. The country has made real progress in expanding electricity access and attracting major investment into the sector, yet too many citizens remain unable to organise their economic lives around the assumption that electricity will be available when they need it. Development cannot be measured only by how many people are connected to the grid. It must also be measured by whether that connection is reliable enough to support a livelihood.

The next stage of reform therefore cannot be another cycle of outage, explanation, emergency intervention and temporary relief. The Gambia needs a system in which the failure of one generator does not cripple supply, in which maintenance is preventative rather than reactive, in which Nawec’s finances are sustainable, and in which investment produces reliability rather than simply infrastructure on paper.

For a wealthy country, a blackout can be an inconvenience. For a country as poor as The Gambia, it can be an economic event. It can mean food lost from a freezer, a day’s income lost at the market, fuel purchased with money meant for household needs, a small business forced to close, a student unable to study and a public service pushed onto expensive backup power.

The real cost of the crisis is therefore not the darkness itself. It is everything that stops working because of it.

And that is ultimately the question The Gambia must confront beyond the September protests and beyond the December election: can the country build an electricity system strong enough to help people escape poverty, rather than one that repeatedly forces poor people to pay for the system’s weaknesses? Until the answer is yes, every new project will remain only part of the story. The real measure of progress will be much simpler: whether Gambians can switch on the light and trust that it will stay on.

Dr Jimmy Hendry Nzally is a political scientist specialising in African politics, democratisation and decolonisation. He holds a PhD in Political Science, with doctoral research on the fall of authoritarian rule and democratic transition in The Gambia following the 2016 presidential election.

By Dr Malang Faye

Last night, the darkness did what no opposition party has managed to do in years. It brought ordinary Gambians onto the streets (middle of the night), in their own numbers, under no party’s flag, chanting that President Barrow must go. There were no UDP buses, no NPP T-shirts, no coalition banners. Just citizens, candles in one hand and frustration in the other, demanding the departure of a president they re-elected less than five years ago. If the Barrow campaign is not alarmed by what it saw last night, then it has not understood the first thing about elections. Elections are not won in December. They are lost in the months before December, one blackout at a time.

Let us be clear about what happened. For months, Gambians have endured some of the worst power outages in the country’s recent history, with some communities reportedly going more than 48 hours without electricity and power returning only briefly before the next outage. Nawec’s own explanation tells us everything we need to know. Nawec says it has a generation capacity of about 104 megawatts with an installed capacity of 31.7 megawatts at Kotu Power Station. We were told some engines are operational while the others undergo rehabilitation. This is not technical failure, rather they have suffered a failure of strategy and management.

The Senegal Gamble: A strategic error of historic proportions
My take is this that the government’s decision to anchor the country’s electricity supply on Senegal was not merely a procurement choice. It was a strategic error of historic proportions. The bill for it has now arrived just three months before election. The strategic mistake? In 2017, Nawec signed an agreement with Senegal’s Senelec to import 50 megawatts of electricity through the OMVG substations at Soma and Brikama, alongside the Karpowership contract for 30 megawatts. After nearly a decade temporary arrangement has become the backbone of our grid. We did not build redundancy. We did not build autonomy. We built a socket in our national wall and plugged it into Dakar. No serious government does such arrangement because energy is not an ordinary commodity. It is the bloodstream of a modern state. Our hospitals, water systems, telecommunications, banks, cold storage, security installations, all of it runs on electricity.

A country that outsources the majority of its power supply has outsourced its ability to function as an independent actor. Germany should have served as a lesson. For nearly two decades, Berlin built its industrial model on cheap Russian gas flowing through Nord Stream, ignoring warning about strategic dependence. When the tap was threatened in 2022, Germany did not face an inconvenience. It faced a national emergency. They spent months to rewired its entire economic policy. Europe largest economy still could not absorb the shock gracefully. Since 2017 the technocrats should have warned the president that energy dependence and security dependence follow the same iron law. The supplier eventually becomes the sovereign. And The Gambia has now placed both levers in the same hands. This is the point that should keep the Barrow campaign awake at night.

Now consider what last night’s protest actually means for December because its significance goes far beyond the energy sector. The political science scholar VO Key Jr, in his classic work The Responsible Electorate, highlight that voters are not fools who are manipulated into the polling booth. They appraise the past and they reward or punish incumbents based on their lived experience. The voter who spent six hours yesterday wondering whether the meat in the freezer has spoiled does not need a manifesto. She has already made her decision. She will communicate it in December. What is really alarming for Barrow is not the anger. It is the absence of organisation. When citizens march without a political party busing them in, without a campaign paying for their placards, without a candidate’s face on their t-shirts, they are practising something far more dangerous than protest. They are practising independence. They are telling every citizen in this country that the government’s weakness has reached the point where the state can no longer credibly claim that dissent is manufactured by opponents.

The man on the street last night was not an opposition activist. He was a voter who had had enough. What should terrify the incumbent is that the man who marches without a party is the easiest man in the country to convince to vote without a party. That is the protest vote. It is the most underpriced asset in Gambian politics right now. Floating voters, the great uncommitted middle of the Gambian electorate, do not move because of rallies. They move because of cumulative grievance. Every night of darkness is a deposit in an account that will be withdrawn on polling day. Nawec raised tariffs by up to 36 per cent and Gambians were told the money would fix the system. The system failed anyway. That combination, paying more and receiving less, is the precise chemistry of electoral punishment.

As December gets closer, the arithmetic is changing rapidly because a credible second and third option now exists. For years, the incumbent’s greatest shield was the fragmentation of the opposition.   The absence of an alternative that floating voters could rally behind without feeling they were wasting their votes. That shield is now gone. Talib now stands as a viable option for precisely the voters we saw on the streets last night. They are unaffiliated, unimpressed, and unafraid. Floating voters behave like water. They flow to the lowest point of resistance. The candidate who offers change without requiring them to first declare a party. The protester who chanted “Barrow must go” without wearing any party’s colour is the exact profile of the voter who will tick Talib’s box without ever attending his rally.

President Barrow has three months to turn this around. That is not nothing. Incumbents command resources, and the same state machinery that converts nationwide tours into campaign assets can still be mobilised. Now the window is narrower than it looks, and the required remedy is not a press conference or another two-week promise from Nawec. It is visible, structural change! A serious investment in domestic generation capacity so that no Senegalese switch can ever again hold this country hostage. Nawec should provide a clear timetable for energy independence as a matter of national security, not utility management. The president should acknowledgment to the Gambian people that the outsourcing of their electricity was a mistake. Without that, the verdict of last night will simply be transferred to the ballot box. There is a straight line from the fuse box in Dakar to the ballot box in Banjul and the government has spent nine years drawing it. In December, the people will simply follow it. The lights went out, and the people came out. If the government does not understand the connection between those two events, December will teach it.

The author, Dr Malang Faye, is a public policy and political analyst. He lectures at the University of The Gambia Political Science Unit.