By Mohammed Jallow
The Gambia is bleeding at its youthful core. The country’s most vibrant resource, its young population, continues to drain through perilous migration routes infamously known as the Backway, a journey paved not with gold, but with graves, anguish, and uncertainty. It is a national tragedy that has silently metastasised into an emergency, yet receives far less urgency than it demands. Today, I speak not only as a Gambian policy advocate and development practitioner, but as a grieving father whose own daughter, Awa, has become a victim of this generational catastrophe.
On 17 October 2025, from Jinack Island in the North Bank Region, a fragile wooden boat carrying an unverified number of passengers, suspected to be close to 200, vanished into the unforgiving expanse of international waters. Among the passengers were young Gambians, elders, women, infants, and reportedly even babies, all united by desperation and the unspoken belief that anywhere beyond here must be better than here. The departure point, an island whispered about with fear even among security personnel, is believed to be a place where officials dread intervention, claiming that operational involvement there carries metaphysical consequences for their careers. Whether rooted in myth or institutional hesitation, the result remains the same: the island continues to serve as an unchecked exit portal for the hopeless.
The viral narrative circulated by Ebrima Drammeh, widely known by many as Ebrima Migrant Situation, alleging that the boat had sunk with no survivors, ignited national panic and plunged hundreds of families into emotional paralysis. His claim, though unverified, underscored the terrifying reality that information vacuums are more lethal than bullets, and uncertainty more psychologically destabilising than confirmed loss. Since that day, no credible maritime authority, regional security apparatus, international agency, or government source has provided confirmation of the vessel’s fate. The silence is deafening. The speculation is torturous. The grief is collective.
The brutal arithmetic of loss
Irregular migration has become a conveyor belt of tragedy for Gambian families. Migration activists confirmed that in 2024 alone, at least 1,603 Gambians died attempting the Backway, 1,557 of them swallowed by the sea. These figures reflect only recorded cases; the true number may be much higher given the clandestine nature of the journeys. In the same year, approximately 5,873 Gambians successfully entered Europe through irregular sea landings, mainly in Spain, highlighting the scale of the outflow. Between March and June 2025, IOM data estimated that more than 4,000 migrants departed The Gambia’s shores in unregulated boats, many overcrowded and structurally unsound, underscoring the intensity of the crisis. On the global scale, 2024 recorded nearly 9,000 migrants dead or missing while attempting to cross into Europe, reinforcing that this is not merely a national crisis, but an international humanitarian catastrophe.
Yet these are not mere numbers. They are faces. They are families. They are futures erased. They are potential doctors who will never practice, engineers who will never build, teachers who will never educate, and leaders who will never rise. Each loss diminishes our national potential and weakens the demographic dividend that could have powered The Gambia’s economic renaissance.
Drivers of Desperation
The forces propelling Gambian youth into these fatal voyages are neither mysterious nor unidentifiable. They are structural, visible, and persistent. Unemployment remains one of the most corrosive realities for young Gambians. With limited industrial diversification, constrained private sector absorption, inadequate access to capital, and under-optimized agricultural modernisation, young people increasingly perceive migration as the only viable career strategy. The allure of Europe is amplified by curated success stories selectively broadcast on social media, where images of sudden wealth mask the years of trauma, detention, humiliation, and loss that define the journeys of many.
Many youths embark on these journeys without informing their families, not out of rebellion, but out of psychological resignation and pre-meditated self-protection from emotional resistance. My own daughter, who lives under my roof, slipped into this journey without my knowledge. The secrecy surrounding these plans reflects a broader sociological truth: our youth do not consult before leaving because they do not believe they have anything left worth defending here. Their silence is not a sign of guilt. It is a symptom of despair.
Socio-economic implosion
The Backway crisis has introduced systemic consequences that threaten The Gambia’s long-term development:
The erosion of human capital stands as the most devastating outcome. The Gambia’s youthful population, which should represent its most dynamic workforce and innovation engine, is instead becoming its most exported commodity. The economy suffers not only from the physical absence of its youth but from the abrupt disappearance of potential contributors to national productivity.
Family disintegration has become collateral damage. The psychological trauma experienced by families of missing migrants destabilises households, disrupts generational continuity, and introduces long-term mental health implications that remain largely unaddressed. Children left behind grow up with the emotional inheritance of abandonment or loss, deepening cycles of instability.
The country’s growing dependence on remittances, while beneficial at the household level, is not a substitute for sustainable economic structuring. It creates a shadow economy that is reactive, unpredictable, and disconnected from national development planning. A country that relies on external earnings but exports internal talent mortgages its future.
Cultural erosion is accelerating. Migration is subtly recalibrating societal aspirations, replacing national service and local ambition with external rescue fantasies. The traditional Gambian identity, rooted in community, resilience, and family cohesion, is increasingly giving way to fractured social imaginaries fueled by the myth of foreign salvation.
The empowerment of smugglers and transnational trafficking syndicates has flourished in the absence of regulated migration pathways. These criminal networks profit from youth despair and operate with an efficiency that state institutions have failed to match in providing alternatives.
Government Intervention: Too slow for a Crisis That Moves Fast
Successive governments have introduced initiatives in partnership with the International Organization for Migration, including voluntary return programs, reintegration support, and community sensitisation efforts. However, these interventions, though well-intentioned, remain inadequate when weighed against the scale of the exodus. Reintegration packages cannot compensate for a system that does not generate sufficient opportunities to prevent initial departures. Sensitisation campaigns cannot overpower desperation when youth still return to communities that have no jobs waiting for them. Maritime warnings cannot compete with the hopeless calculus of a young person who believes death abroad is preferable to stagnation at home.
Policy must shift from response to prevention, from aid to opportunity, from warnings to solutions.
The Uncomfortable truth: Europe’s doors are Built on Africa’s Graves
It is hypocritical for European governments to decry irregular migration while benefiting from African brain drain, youth labor exploitation, and structural inequality in global trade relations. The Gambia’s youth do not flee merely because they admire Europe. They flee because the global economic architecture systematically disadvantages African states, limits industrial growth, constrains fair trade participation, and amplifies wealth asymmetry.
Europe must stop treating African migration as a security threat and begin treating it as a policy failure of global inequality.
The way forward: A national blueprint for youth survival
The Gambian government must implement decisive reforms that reflect the urgency of the crisis:
Youth employment must become a national infrastructure priority, not a ministerial talking point. The country must expand job-absorbing sectors, incentivize private sector growth, introduce industrial manufacturing pipelines, digitize public service opportunities, and modernize agriculture beyond subsistence rhetoric.
Investment in youth entrepreneurship must move from symbolism to capital deployment. Young people do not only need training. They need funding, incubation, market access, and institutional protection for their innovations.
Technical and vocational training must be synchronized with labor market demand, regional trade opportunities, and international certification standards so that youth qualifications carry economic mobility without physical migration.
Maritime security must be reinforced through inter-agency coastal surveillance, regional intelligence cooperation, and rapid response naval monitoring, particularly around migration-vulnerable departure zones.
Psychological support systems must be established for affected families, with national emergency communication protocols for missing migrant cases.
Public sector reform must challenge the culture of fear that discourages officers from intervening in high-risk zones due to career insecurity. No territory of The Gambia should be abandoned to rumor when national security is at stake.
International responsibility: Beyond sympathy
The international community must support The Gambia with development investments that expand opportunity at the source. Funding must prioritise job creation, climate resilience, digital transformation, youth innovation, and regional economic mobility. Legal migration frameworks must be expanded to allow young Africans to travel for work and education without risking death.
A father’s plea, a nation’s mandate
The disappearance of Awa’s boat is not an isolated tragedy. It is a national mirror reflecting a generation in crisis. The Gambia must rise to defend its youth not with speeches, but with jobs, opportunity, innovation, security, and hope.
Silence will not save us. Prevention will. Innovation will. Employment will. Government courage will. International responsibility will. Until young Gambians see a future worth staying for, the boats will continue to depart, the mothers will continue to cry, and the fathers will continue to bury dreams instead of building them.
The Gambia does not need pity. It needs partnership. It does not need fear. It needs policy. It does not need silence. It needs urgency. Most of all, it does not need to export its children to import survival.
May the government hear the cries of the sea not as distant echoes, but as a policy alarm. May it treat this crisis with the seriousness it deserves. And may our youth one day announce journeys of achievement, not departures of desperation.
The Backway is not just a route. It is a verdict on our collective failure. Let us rewrite that verdict before it becomes our legacy.
