By Madi Jobarteh
Sixty-one years after independence, the Gambia remains among the world’s least developed countries, an undeniable verdict on our failures as a society. After decades of self-rule, poverty, institutional decay, poor services, and weak leadership persist not by accident but by tolerance. We have normalized mediocrity, excused incompetence, and rewarded sentiment over performance. Independence did not fail us, rather, we failed its promise. Until we confront this reality and begin demanding excellence, accountability, and results, starting with ourselves, national progress will remain an illusion.
Naivety, the lowering of standards, ego-massaging, and taking things for granted do not build societies. Societies that progress are those that deliberately extract the best from their people by setting high standards, encouraging doubt, questioning assumptions, and refusing to settle for less. They challenge one another relentlessly, knowing that even their best is never enough. They do not excuse underperformance but confront it. They hold their leaders accountable, not out of hostility, but to compel competence and proof of worth.
While many of us are rightly critical of the West, there is an important lesson to learn from them: their willingness to challenge themselves, interrogate authority, and question even the fundamentals of their beliefs, institutions, and culture. This culture of self-scrutiny has produced excellence, quality, and efficiency for them. One of the things that amazes me when I visit European cities is the sustained quality and efficiency of service delivery from the provision of electricity to public transport, the quality of public infrastructure and even the cleanliness of streets.
Since independence, our dear country has largely been characterized by mediocrity across nearly every sector. We refrain from questioning. We avoid doubting. We resist asking hard questions or demanding results. When those who do so speak up, they are branded jealous, controversial, cynical, arrogant, or unpatriotic. In keeping standards low and discouraging challenge, we entrench tyranny, not only in government, but in public institutions, civil society organizations, political parties, companies, and even informal clubs, community structures and even in homes.
The result is obvious. Services are poor. Institutions fail to fulfill their mandates and gradually become liabilities instead of engines of development. Individuals and organizations stagnate, never evolving from good to great. A cursory look at our society reveals widespread naivety, lack of clarity, and dangerous complacency, sometimes born of ignorance, other times of dishonesty, and often a combination of both.
If we are serious about learning from societies that have achieved remarkable progress without losing their cultural identity, we should look to Japan or Singapore. Despite their extraordinary economic, industrial, and technological achievements, they have preserved their core cultural values. They demand excellence from one another while upholding efficiency, hard work, responsibility, discipline, and integrity. They reward merit and performance, not sentiment or loyalty. That is how renewal is sustained.
In the Gambia, however, we accept mediocrity. We condone abuse and normalize incompetence. In social, economic, and political life, we submit to ideas, systems, processes, and leaders not based on effectiveness or results, but on emotion, sectarian interests, hero-worship, convenience, or selfish calculation. Governance and development therefore remain substandard and, in many cases, woefully poor.
Look at state institutions and the quality of goods and services they provide. Look at political parties that operate like religious or cultist associations rather than democratic institutions. Look at leadership where longevity and sentiment matter more than performance, outcomes, and transformation. In such a society, success exists only in isolated pockets, while the overall trajectory is stagnation, which is merely deterioration in disguise.
No one is indispensable. No one is infallible. There is always someone who can do better, and systems can always be improved. A society that does not demand the highest standards from itself cannot progress.
After 61 years, it is time for Gambians to become impatient with the status quo, impatient with broken systems, weak institutions, poor leadership, and normalised failure. A better Gambia is possible. But it will only emerge when we set very high standards for ourselves and for one another, i.e., when we stop taking things for granted, or when we reject complacency and indifference, and when we remain vigilant, self-critical, and unsatisfied.
Our best is not enough. We must keep pushing and expanding limits, raising expectations, and demanding excellence until progress becomes irreversible. Only then will we begin the transformation that places our beloved Gambia among nations that are truly advancing.
This is my message as we head towards a national dialogue.
For The Gambia, Our Homeland.
