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What does NAFAA mean by cultural renaissance?

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By Ousainou Allen

Interim president, NAFAA political party

One may ask, what does NAFAA mean by cultural renaissance?

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Throughout human history, human beings have lived in communities and equally coexisted with nature. This has warranted the need for humans to adopt “culture” as a means of realising their true being.

According to the Oxford Dictionary, “culture” refers to the customs, beliefs, art, way of life, and social organisation of a particular country or group, essentially encompassing the learned behaviors and values of a society, including their attitudes, arts, and modes of perception.

Judging by the above definition, and putting it in the context of Gambian society, culture encompasses everything to do with our daily life: our sense of justice; our perception of everyday realities including political affiliation; our system of education; our religious affiliation; our patriotic values; those transversal skills (critical thinking; problem solving; entrepreneurial mindset; emotional intelligence) and so forth.

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It is not an unknown fact today that this land we call The Gambia was once inhabited by communities that had vibrant, well-organised social set-ups that promoted justice, good governance, creative arts, religion and spirituality, a sense of identity that included the way they comported themselves, the building and infrastructure architecture, their diet as well as their inextricable relationships with nature and the environment.

Throughout history, for many nations, there occurred a period of prolonged subjugation and colonisation by foreign powers or empires which in many cases resulted in the imposition of the culture of the occupiers on the occupied. In our Gambian context, the British Empire occupied and colonised us from 1821 until 1970, when we were finally allowed to become a republic. In perspective, this means 149 years of cultural disruption, economic exploitation, social inequality, forced labour, political disenfranchisement, linguistic imperialism, environmental degradation, imposing cash crop economies whilst they looted our natural resources, artifacts and stripped us of our sovereignty.

As a consequence, The Gambia, like most colonies of the British Empire was forced to abdicate its sovereignty in the areas of culture, agriculture and uniqueness in the way our society was governed in exchange for a colonial architecture that is extractive and paternalistic in nature. Unfortunately, over the years, this colonial architecture has bred native collaborators, that is, our current government and elected officials, hell bent on perpetuating the status quo. This colonial architecture and their local collaborators have reduced our beloved country to become dependents on food aid although we are endowed with rich agricultural history, about 500,000 hectares of arable land, abundance of irrigable water sources (ground and surface water) and an average of 10 hours of sunlight daily.

Today, The Gambian is faced with the two starkly contrasting choices:

Firstly, embracing the status quo by aligning themselves with the collaborators whose raison d’être unfortunately perpetuates institutionalised ills namely; corruption, nepotism, mediocrity, inefficiency, lack of vision and purpose, lack of patriotism and national identity, indignity suffered by Gambians especially the most vulnerable, lack of adherence to the rule of law, violations of fundamental Human rights, rapid degradation of our once amiable social setup, disregard for our flora and fauna and the depletion of our natural resources.

Secondly, educate themselves on the importance of realising a cultural renaissance as well as economic sovereignty as was achieved by many nations today including some of the most advanced, for example, Japan, China, South Korea, India and in the case of Africa, Rwanda are taking great strides towards achieving this feat.

The NAFAA project will provide Gambians the opportunity to experience a renaissance and transformation in our existence as a nation by:

• Modelling our development agenda in conformity with our cultural heritage, intrinsic norms and values, identity and learnt history.

• Adopting a citizen-centered approach to governance that meets the needs and aspirations of Gambians.

• Instituting cross-cutting reforms that will set The Gambia on a pedestal of structural transformation.

• Harnessing the overwhelming potential of our greatest resource, that is, the human resource, by prioritisaing science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and technical, vocational, education and training (TVET) skills to build the human capital required to engineer The Gambia’s ascension to the status of an economic powerhouse.

• Adopting a more inclusive long-term sub-regional development agenda that promotes regional integration, expedite development and promote regional peace and stability.

Booting out the current NPP government in the 2026 presidential elections and electing NAFAA in power is the only option to break the colonial chains that have historically bound us and set us on a path to cultural renaissance and economic sovereignty.

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