By Dave Manneh
Lead researcher
Reclaiming Heritage: A Decolonial Framework
This opinion essay aims to critically examine the current draft of the National Land Policy (2026-2035) and propose essential changes as part of the ongoing consultation. With validation activities continuing throughout April and May 2025, this is a crucial moment to ensure land justice for Kombo. Securing Futures, as land rights activists and members of Kombo’s land-owning communities view this consultation process with a blend of hope and deep apprehension.
“Our land is our story, our identity, the very essence of who we are as Kombonkas.”
Imagine a Kombonka elder, Mba Mariama Bojang, who has tilled the same soil her ancestors did for centuries. Now, imagine officials telling her that this land, her family heritage, now belongs to the state. This is the reality for many in Kombo.
Like other African communities, the lives of Kombo’s inhabitants are linked to the soil of their ancestors. However, accidents of geography and history—the Atlantic coastline, mild climate, and European colonialism—has cast a unique shadow over this region and its land-owning clans. This confluence of historical factors spurred and continues to spur internal migration to Kombo. Indeed, many Gambians from other regions share six common aspirations: to move to Kombo; to migrate abroad; to send parents on the Hajj; to purchase land in Kombo; to build a home; and finally, to relocate their families from upcountry.
This internal migration has led to whole families abandoning their rural ancestral homes for Kombo. The ramifications of these societal changes have placed immense pressure on Kombo’s limited land resources while simultaneously increasing their value — a situation that made Kombo lands targets for dispossession through systemic state abuse. The result is the depriving of these Indigenous communities their birth rights.
While these dynamics reflect broader socio-economic trends, the state institutionalised them through legal frameworks that prioritised their control over communal ownership. Among these frameworks, the State Lands Act 1991 stands out as a key catalyst of dispossession. This law formalised the redefinition of Kombo lands as state property. The effect of this law not only disrupted traditional land governance systems but also entrenched inequalities, making the region vulnerable to further exploitation under the guise of development.
It is crucial to recognise that The Gambian government did not initiate the national land policy draft out of a genuine commitment to land equity. Funding conditions laid, out by the World Bank funded West Africa Coastal Areas (WACA) Resilience Investment Project, compelled Gambia to initiate this exercise.
While the WACA programme targets critical ecological challenges like coastal erosion, flooding, and pollution, it operates within a development framework that has significant land governance implications. We see a pattern here: the continuous trend where International Development Partners (IDPs) shape national agendas with ill-fitting generalised and formulaic templates.
Scrutinising The State Lands Act 1991: The Critical Turning Point
This legislation, a byproduct of the 1980s Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) represents a significant and deeply damaging shift in post-independence land governance. SAP was a set of economic policies International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank imposed on developing countries as a condition for loans.
More than mere legislation, the State Lands Act inflicted a festering wound on Kombo, targeting its most productive, populous, and industrious areas: North, South, and Central. This disproportionate and selective application constitutes a gross violation of fundamental rights and a blatant disregard for long-established inheritance traditions.
Under the Act’s provisions, the state explicitly reclassified lands passed down through generations as “state lands,” fundamentally transforming communities from rightful owners into precarious tenants holding “deemed leaseholds” granted by the very entity that orchestrated their dispossession.
The consequences have been catastrophic, evidenced by numerous cases. In Brufut and Yundum, the Jammeh regime seized hectares of communal lands and gifted them to a private developer, Mustapha Taf Njie. The communities rejected the paltry compensation Taf Njie offered, yet he proceeded with his developments against their wishes.
There is substantial evidence that officials of the Ministry of Lands and the Department of Physical Planning actively engage in corrupt and illegal land dealings. In provable cases, plots of land from areas the state designated for “public purposes”—such as housing estates and associated amenities—have been improperly distributed amongst state officials, friends, family, and other connected individuals. This systematic corruption undermines both the stated public interest justification for land seizures and the legitimacy of the entire land governance system.
Across Kombo, the state has seized vast tracts of land, offering compensation which amounts to a tiny fraction of the true value, and none in some instances. Sukuta Nema Su, Sukuta Salagi and Brusubi are examples. Even the slightest sign of resistance against this systemic injustice elicits violent intervention by security forces. These forces typically arrive in full tactical gear reminiscent of preparations for armed conflict rather than civilian engagement. They use physical repression, including beatings, arrests, detentions, and demolition of buildings.
Even legal challenges by the land-owning communities have been predictably unsuccessful, as exemplified by the Brufut Manneh clan v Taf Holding (High Court of The Gambia – Civil Suit 44/03). Despite the clan embarking on the legal route in the forlorn hope of holding on to their inheritance, Taf proceeded to construct hundreds of domestic and commercial units in what he calls Brufut Gardens, and the AU Villas. These are lands with an estimated market value of US$12-15 million at today’s rate at very conservative estimates and which Njie offered less than US$6,000 in compensation.
The ongoing demolitions in Sukuta Salagi further illustrate this perpetual injustice, where the state demolishes the houses and properties of the customary landowners. What is even more disturbing is members of land-owning communities consistently report rejections of their applications for plots on their ancestral lands.
Although the state designates these lands for “public purposes”—such as housing estates and associated amenities, ostensibly making every citizen eligible—it routinely rejects applications from members of the land-owning communities seeking to build homes for their expanding families. When, these indigenes rightly build on their land, compelled by necessity and the state’s rejection of their applications, the state demolishes their buildings.
This is not a series of isolated incidents, but a systematic pattern of dispossession throughout Kombo that favours outsiders over the indigenes. This creates tensions and threatens social cohesion, with the potential to escalate into civil strife.
A common expression one hears throughout Brufut powerfully captures the depth of feelings:
“They didn’t just take our farmlands, rich with historical names; they took our heritage, imposing their fanciful names upon our land and expecting us to celebrate the outsiders now living in their exclusive enclave.”
While proponents might argue that a streamlined, nationalised land governance framework engenders developments to meet infrastructure needs and population growth, it is crucial to recognise that these benefits often accrue primarily to new developments and newcomers—not the dispossessed indigenes.
These communities perceive the state to be a threat to their livelihoods and the tenure security of the next generation through the dispossessions. Thus, any talk of infrastructure developments causes more ire than desire. To therefore suggest gratitude for incidental benefits from these communities’ own loss is to rationalise injustice.
Analysing The Draft National Land Policy: Unresolved Concerns
While the current draft policy articulates laudable goals of equitable access and sustainable management, we identify a fundamental concern in its conspicuous silence on the State Lands Act 1991. As the policy undergoes regional and national validation in the coming weeks, we urge policymakers to address this critical gap. Despite acknowledging the need to ”harmonise legal standards of tenure governance” (Section 9.4), the current draft fails to explicitly address or amend this legalised illegality.
Policies are not neutral instruments; they reflect interests and reveal power dynamics. As Ben Suwareh, a good governance activist, notes, “The omission of the State Lands Act from the new policy effectively perpetuates the injustices it has enabled for decades.” This omission effectively legitimises the ongoing elite capture and economic exploitation enabled by the Act. Section 7.4 explicitly allows state entities to continue leasing lands to investors without adequate compensation to customary owners, perpetuating systemic disinheritance.
Deconstructing The Land Reform Narrative: An Urgent Necessity
The dominant narrative often presents land tenure reform as necessary to address insecurities in “Indigenous” systems and promote development. This simplistic narrative obscures the fact that tenure insecurity is a result of capitalist, free-market policies imposed by “International Development Partners.” These models, rooted in “modernisation” theory and neoliberal principles, prioritise individualisation and commodification of land. A fundamental clash with customary tenure systems, constituting a form of epistemic violence and delegitimising Indigenous knowledge systems.
A key paradox lies in the policy’s treatment of gender. While Section 7.5 aims to protect women’s land rights, it overlooks the sophisticated gender-sensitive systems that historically existed. The traditional system provided women with distinct pathways to land ownership: Faaro, Naako and Tandaako. Men, by contrast, had a single path: Kunko.
The imposing of Western models which focus on individualism rather than communalism, has undermined these traditional protections. Both genders have lost land, but women have suffered a double dispossession, losing both land and the cultural frameworks that legitimised claims to land.
The draft policy thus ironically offers to “safeguard” women’s rights through the very frameworks that contributed to their erosion. This emphasis on land titling and registration touted as essential for tenure security, represents a “manufactured crisis”, disrupting social contracts and eroding social capital, creating insecurity, and opening avenues for elite land acquisition. This process leads to dispossession, erosion of social cohesion, gender-imbalanced resource access, and ecological unsustainability. The draft policy perpetuates a simplistic “traditional versus modern” narrative, legitimising dispossession.
Proposing Essential Changes: A Path Forward
Foundation for Reform
To correct these injustices and ensure that the policy serves the interests of all Gambians, particularly the dispossessed and the marginalised, fundamental changes are imperative:
Revise The State Lands Act 1991
The Gambia must repeal or substantively amend the State Lands Act of 1991, moving beyond vague promises of reform to implement concrete changes aligned with constitutional principles and international best practices. These amendments should establish robust safeguards to protect ancestral claims and communal land rights from expropriation under the guise of “public purpose” or investment initiatives that primarily benefit the elite.
Centring Indigenous Traditions
The reformed policy must transcend mere recognition of customary systems by centring Indigenous traditions in land governance. This requires the Gambian state to formally acknowledge the authority of clan structures in land administration, document customary laws while preserving their inherent flexibility, and create a hybrid governance model that meaningfully integrates traditional authorities with modern administrative structures. In this reformed system, the state must respect oral traditions and testimonies as valid evidence of land claims, honouring the ways communities have preserved and transmitted knowledge across generations.
Immediate Moratorium
The state should impose an immediate moratorium on all further allocations of land designated for “public purposes” until it implements comprehensive reforms. This pause will create space for systemic review while preventing continuation of harmful practices. Additionally, the government must freeze land already allocated but not yet developed pending proper investigation, particularly where conflicts or disputes have arisen. This temporary measure is essential for establishing trust in the reform process.
Investigating Past Corruption
The state must confront past land corruption directly through the establishment of a special investigative unit with statutory powers to review suspicious allocations, subpoena documents, and conduct public hearings. This unit must document the full extent of misappropriation by state officials who have diverted lands designated for “public purposes” to colleagues, family, friends, and other connected individuals. The resulting comprehensive record will inform both restitution efforts and future policy reforms, creating accountability for historical wrongs.
