By Lamin Sillah
In recent weeks, Gambian naval personnel participated in training hosted by Senegal’s National Navy Academy (EMAN), an initiative framed as part of regional cooperation. This looks like progress: Gambians sharpening skills, engaging neighbours, and strengthening military ties. Yet beneath the surface lies a question of sovereignty, sustainability, and the long-term costs of outsourcing defence development.
For decades, The Gambia has sent officers abroad to some of the world’s most elite academies, where they endure rigorous training in close-quarters combat (CQC), urban and rural warfare, and naval operations. The investment is heavy—foreign allowances, overseas deployments, and the immense sacrifices of those officers. But when they return, the system often sidelines them. Their expertise fades due to a lack of platforms to teach, refresh, or transfer knowledge. Then, to compound the irony, the state invites foreign instructors from competing nations to run courses on Gambian soil.
This cycle raises a fundamental question: what value do we retain from our investments?
The Prestige Others Gain
When foreign nations send their soldiers abroad, they return with new skills and prestige. They become ambassadors of their country’s professionalism, earning reputational capital for their armed forces and enhancing their state’s diplomatic weight. The academy that trained them also gained stature. Sandhurst, West Point, and Saint-Cyr are household names because they train locals and foreigners under their own flag.
By contrast, the Gambia risks being the nation that supplies soil and students while others reap prestige. We lose influence and identity whenever an officer returns from abroad without being allowed to teach or a foreign instructor takes the lead over a Gambian graduate.
The Real Threats: Beyond Guns and Boots
Physical security has never been Gambia’s weakest link. Patrols, arrests, and displays of force have always existed in some form. Our real vulnerability lies in the intangible layers of security:
Doctrine and Law – Who writes the rules of engagement, who sets precedents for cross-border pursuit, and who shapes maritime and airspace norms? Too often, it is not us.
Information and narrative – which story travels abroad? The one written by Gambian professionals, or one written for us by neighbours and partners?
Economy and logistics – who controls corridors, ports, fisheries, and supply chains? Those who hold them need no weapon to dominate policy.
Human Terrain and Morale – what happens to officers who train abroad, return full of energy, and sit idle while outsiders are invited in? Frustration, loss of motivation, or migration.
If left unaddressed, these gaps will matter more than any shortage of guns or ships.
Threat index (Condensed)
1. Skill atrophy – trained officers’ skills decay within months without refreshers.
2. Doctrinal dependency – outsiders teach Gambians about Gambian security, embedding foreign doctrine in our institutions.
3. Prestige leakage – others gain a global reputation for training Gambians, while Gambia gains little recognition.
4. Intelligence exposure – foreign trainers observe our facilities, people, and culture.
5. Morale risk – talented officers disengage or exit when underused.
6. Budget inefficiency – money spent abroad yields no compounding effect at home.
7. Diaspora alienation – Gambians with global experience remain untapped, watching as contracts go elsewhere.
8. Asymmetry with Senegal – Reliance on Senegalese instruction risks shaping Gambian doctrine through Senegalese lenses.
9. Legal lag – hot-pursuit and cross-border protocols remain ambiguous, inviting exploitation.
10. Intangible gaps – weakness in narrative, law, and economy leaves the nation open to silent influence.
The path forward: Mitigation and guidelines
This is not a call to reject cooperation. It is a call to balance it and ensure Gambia reaps as much as it sows. The way forward must be peaceful, diplomatic, and practical:
1. Mandatory teach-back – every officer trained abroad should be required to conduct courses at home within 60 days of return. Skills must multiply, not wither.
2. Continuing Professional Development (CPD) – establish annual recertification cycles. Regular exercises must keep CQB and naval skills alive, not remembered only in certificates.
3. Gambian-led training first – foreign instructors may be guests, but Gambian graduates and diaspora experts must hold the lead. This preserves sovereignty and pride.
4. Diaspora integration – Gambians who served in Western forces, consultancies, and UN missions are a hidden arsenal of expertise. Invite them to build a registry, contract them fairly, and let them shape doctrine.
5. Doctrine and legal clarity – draft national rules on hot pursuit, maritime rights, and cross-border incidents. Remove ambiguity before it is exploited.
6. National doctrine centre – a small but permanent body to capture lessons learned, publish manuals, and ensure that Gambian tactics remain Gambian.
7. Intangible security strategy – treat law, information, economy, morale, and legitimacy as central to defence. They are harder to see but easier to lose.
8. Diplomatic balance – deepen cooperation with Senegal and others, but always from a position of equal respect. Partnerships should strengthen sovereignty, not dilute it.
Conclusion
The issue is not training. It is what we do with the training. Gambia must stop exporting prestige while importing dependency. Every Gambian officer trained abroad is a national asset, not a private trophy. Every foreign soldier hosted here should leave with the impression that they trained under Gambian leadership, not above it.
Physical security alone will not save us; it never has. Intangible security—our laws, narratives, morale, and doctrine—must be guarded as fiercely. This is how small nations survive in a world of giants: not by competing in numbers but by outmanoeuvring in wisdom.
The path is clear. What remains is courage—the courage to trust our own, to use what we already have, and to write our own doctrine in our own name.
The author is a Security Risk Management Consultant
