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Investments, polls colour the Gambia

The first two weeks of the month saw a flurry of diplomatic activity in The Gambia, when the president agreed to receive the credentials of foreign envoys accredited to country.

As the smallest country in mainland Africa, The Gambia hosts only 15 embassies in its capital, Banjul. Most of the countries accredited to The Gambia have their embassies in Dakar, Senegal, and Malaysia is one of those countries.

I have always likened The Gambia and Senegal to the state of Brunei and Malaysia. Senegal encloses The Gambia completely, leaving only a small part of its western coast, which opens out into the Atlantic Ocean. So it is with us and Brunei.

Like Brunei, The Gambia is dwarfed by its neighbour Senegal, but only in terms of land size. And similar to Malaysia and Brunei, the Gambians and Senegalese are similar in appearance, and have a common language.

This last is a bit odd, considering that Senegal is French-speaking, and therefore, a member of the Francophone, while The Gambia is English-speaking. But the tribes are common to both, so they can understand Madinka, Fula and Wolof, which is widely spoken in Senegal.

Senegal and The Gambia share much more than a border. In 1982, both countries agreed that a confederation of sorts of the two countries would allow them to pool their resources and prevent instability. Seven years later, by 1989, the dream was dead.

In 1994, when Yahya Jammeh took over The Gambia in a bloodless coup, he exacerbated the unrest in Senegal's southern region of Cassamance, where the land is rich and fertile.

Jammeh, allegedly encouraging rebel forces to create trouble in Senegal, gave its bigger neighbour a headache that was rid of only with his departure.

In fact, Senegal and The Gambia are so intertwined that Adama Barrow's meteoric rise to power in The Gambia is largely seen as wholly attributable to President Macky Sall of Senegal.

Disgruntled Gambians, however, whisper that friendships between leaders cannot be based on one leader seemingly leading the other around on a leash.

I could not help but think of all the leaders in history who have been helped to power by outside forces, only to have them turn the tables: the United States with Saddam Hussein in 1963, and then again with Agusto Pinochet in 1973; and France with Hissane Habre in 1986.

Hopefully, this one turns out to be a symbiotic and peaceful kind of relationship, one that sustains a democracy rather than a dictatorship.

Travelling by road from Dakar in Senegal to Banjul in The Gambia is interesting as only Africa can be. You go from a city with high-rise apartments, lavish villas and a multitude of shops side by side, to closely-clustered picturesque village huts in rural Senegal via a dual carriageway that can rival Malaysia's Seremban-Port Dickson highway.

The six-hour journey through Senegal will also allow you glimpses of smaller towns and even one particularly bustling market place and extremely busy bus station, which you have no choice but to go through if you want to reach Senegal's border with The Gambia.

After clearing immigration on both sides, you would immediately find stark differences. The most obvious to me was recalibrating my thinking so that I would greet people in English rather than in French.

In Senegal, villages seem to be congregated around a community centre of sorts. But in The Gambia, the towns are spread out from that one row of shops that feature prominently in every single town we saw.

Crossing via ferry to Banjul is uneventful at best, but alarming during a pandemic when there seems to be no attempt at physical distancing.

Banjul itself is small, and easily traversed from one end to the other in under one hour.

There are no iconic buildings, monuments or even places of interest. What Banjul has is the sea, and the river from which is takes its name.

The roads, however, are much more organised than in Dakar, and that feel of the 1970s small-town Malaysia just does not seem to abate.

As can be expected of a country half the size of Selangor and with a total population of just two million, The Gambia seems slightly empty. Not to say there are no traffic jams, however. Rush hour will see long queues of cars on the Senegambia Highway, the main thoroughfare for the suburbs of Banjul.

Time seems to have stood still for this small West African country, suspended in development during the 20-plus year rule by Jammeh. It will take a lot to get The Gambia back on track. Which is why The Gambia is banking so much on a successful hosting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation Summit next year.

This is a country that was trying to attract international investments, donors and other financial assistance, when the global pandemic hit, and hit hard.

This year will be a litmus test of sorts for this country as it tries to regain its international attractiveness and credibility, and hold free and fair presidential elections in December.

The writer is a foreign service officer, who writes on international affairs with particular emphasis on Africa


The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New Straits Times

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