The main opposition United Democratic Party (UDP) leader and Gambia First Coalition presidential candidate Ousainu Darboe has vowed to facilitate the reintegration of African descendants who wish to resettle in The Gambia and to grant them Gambian citizenship.
Darboe said the African diaspora question is not just about Gambians abroad, but the wider African diaspora scattered by slavery.
“That is a great historical tragedy, and to address it we all have to realise that we cannot have our own brothers and sisters wanting to come back home to Africa and failed to facilitate it. We should encourage it,” Darboe said.
He argued that returnees do not just come to settle physically. “They should melt into society, bringing knowledge, resources, and hunger to reconnect with culture from traditional ceremonies to village life.”
The veteran lawyer and politician said those who wish to take up citizenship of The Gambia must be given the opportunity to say: “I am Gambian, I hold Gambian national documents.”
“A UDP government is committed to facilitate that for them, because when we do so, we are addressing a historical tragedy.”
“This should be seen as ‘I am lucky my father was not taken away. And you are unlucky your father was taken away, brutalised, dehumanised.”
“This is home for them. And if they want to come home, why should they not be welcome?”
African descendants in The Gambia
Through an orgnaisation called Bla-Xit, co-founded in The Gambia by Juliet Ryan (Nyancho Kujabi) and Adrian Ryan (Hatib Kujabi), and the Council of African Descendants (COAD), returnees from the UK, USA and the Caribbean have campaigned for years for automatic citizenship in The Gambia.
In 2010, former President Yahya Jammeh orally offered citizenship to all Black descendants willing to resettle, but with no legal basis, only about 10 people received it during the Roots Festival.
The 2020 rejected Draft Constitution, under Section 188, would have cut the wait from 15 years to 2-4 years for descendants of the enslaved.
