Dear Editor,
President Barrow’s remarks at the commemoration of the Thiaroye Massacre strike at a truth we have ignored for far too long. If we accept that African soldiers fought, suffered, and died in wars they did not choose, then we must also accept that those experiences are almost absent from the education we give our children. His call for “honest teaching” should not be dismissed as ceremonial language. It is a real challenge to how The Gambia teaches its own past.
The uncomfortable fact is that most of the history taught in Gambian schools still comes from European writers. Our textbooks describe European battles in great detail, yet they devote only a few sentences to the Gambia Regiment in Burma or the West African soldiers who fought in Europe. The Thiaroye Massacre itself, one of the most defining events in the history of African veterans, is hardly taught at all. This is not an accident. It is the result of decades of relying on external narratives that were never designed to tell the African story.
If we want honest teaching, then we must start by rewriting the curriculum. Our children deserve reading materials that explain the realities of colonial wars, the forced conscription of African soldiers, the broken promises of post-war compensation, and the tragedies like Thiaroye that exposed the racism at the heart of colonial power. This is our history. Yet it remains missing from many of the textbooks used in our classrooms.
But this effort cannot fall only on teachers and academics. It requires political commitment. If President Barrow is serious about transforming how history is taught, then he must also be serious about supporting the people who can produce that history. We cannot keep asking Gambian historians to write books, revise curricula, and conduct research with no funding. Real historical work requires time, resources, and institutional support.
Instead of spending millions of dalasis patronising fake intellectuals whose books add nothing of value, the government should be investing in real scholars who can document our past with accuracy and integrity. This includes individuals such as Sam Sarr, who publicly claimed that the President sponsored the publication of his books, yet those texts remain unread by anyone other than himself. Not even his own children engage with them, because the material is widely recognised as dry, confused, and essentially fictional, offering no academic substance and no educational value to the country. Gambian historians, writers, and researchers can only produce the textbooks our students deserve if they are given the resources to do so. Oral histories must be recorded, archives must be funded, and indigenous scholarship must be treated as a national priority.
For this to occur at a systemic level, the Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education must assume a central, clearly defined role. The Ministry should lead a structured curriculum review process, commission qualified Gambian historians to produce new textbooks, and establish national content standards that ensure African perspectives are integrated across all grades. It must also coordinate teacher-training programmes so that educators are prepared to teach the revised curriculum confidently and accurately. Additionally, the Ministry should create a long-term textbook development plan, with scheduled revisions, peer review procedures, and budgeted funding streams to guarantee continuity rather than one-off interventions.
Without this institutional leadership, efforts to reform history education will remain fragmented and unsustainable.
President Barrow’s message is correct. Our children deserve textbooks that tell the African story. But the responsibility for making that happen rests squarely on the State. If the President wants honest teaching, he must back his words with investment in the very people capable of rewriting the narrative. Only then can The Gambia finally teach a history that belongs to its own people.
Kebeli Demba Nyima
