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| President Barrow Meets Saudi King |
Gambia is exerting all
attention to the fourteenth summit of the Organisation Islamic Conference (OIC)
scheduled for November 2019 in Banjul. In the wake of new political
dispensation, this will serve as the greatest diplomatic test to vibrate the
country’s presence in the world map.
The Gambia has not
hosted international event of this magnitude since the Banjul Africa Union
Summit twelve years ago. It was Gambia’s development season witnessing high
class coastal road linking the capital city to the international Airport,
street lightning project, presidential villa in addition to a five star hotel,
Sheraton.
Since coming into power
in January 2017, President Adama Barrow continues to express desire to
reconnect the country with her global partners and has made several
high-powered delegated visits to all continents for the same purpose.
He maintains that his
government “inherited an extremely challenging legacy manifested by a broken
economy, gross abuse and plunder of our meagre state resources, social
regression, poor and dilapidated infrastructure, and wide-ranging societal
challenges, among the most urgent of which is the frustrations and lack of
opportunities for our young people.
Government official
will rub soldiers with their fellow colleagues in diplomatic setup for shared
goal. The Gambian diplomats would not hesitate to borrow from their leader that
the past management is responsible for the propelling of “thousands of our
young people to undertake the risky journey, often with tragic consequences,
across the Mediterranean Sea in search of a better future.”
What Are The Key Expectations?
In March this year the
National Assembly of the Gambia ratified a state sponsored motion to increase
the frequency of meetings by the Islamic bloc to two years instead of three in
reference to its article eight.
As major development
projects are decided during the OIC summits, the proposal is in the interest of
countries like the Gambia according to Foreign Affairs Minister Ousainou Darboe.
“Meeting every two
years will minimise the noise which serves to distort communication and seek to
bridge the economic gap between the Islamic block and the rest of the world”,
he told parliamentarians.
Final ratification of
the article at OIC level will require a two
third favour of the fifty-seven member states.
In addition to the ongoing
construction of a Five-Star Hotel Resort,
Presidential Villas and Ultra-Modern Shopping Mall all in preparation for the
OIC Summit, the president is likely asking for more especially through his
recent visits to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
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OIC Delegation Meets Gambia's Vice President |
OIC delegation headed
by Director General for Political Affairs Tariq Bakheet met Gambian officials
in assessment on the level of preparation in February.
During a two-day visit, the OIC delegation
conducted site visits to facilities that are being put in place for the summit,
including the multimillion dollar International Conference Centre under
construction. Gambia’s Vice President Fatoumata Jallow-Tambajang,
expressed confidence that the country will meet expectations in hosting the
summit of Muslims world leaders.
Among
the noticeable signs is participation of eighty-five personnel of the Gambia
Armed Forces (GAF) in a global terrorism exercise in Dammam, Saudi Arabia,
March this year.
The King of Saudi
hosted President Adama Barrow who was accompanied by a high powered delegation in June in
further discussion subject to the ongoing preparations for the OIC Summit.
OIC Bid Under Jammeh
It appeared that the
former president had a lifetime dream to host the OIC summit. Upon his return from the twelfth summit in
Egypt in 2013, former president Yahya Jammeh said the Gambia should have hosted the OIC summit since 2003 and that was why
he was made vice chairman of the OIC in preparation to become next chairman. He
noted that this plan was rescheduled in honour of the then prime minister of
Malaysia who requested for the chance before retirement.
During the Malaysian summit,
Jammeh said he also allowed neighbouring Senegal to host the subsequent one as
they were his only challenger.
In anticipation of the
advantages associated to the summit, the former president had declared the
Gambia as Islamic State amidst shivering relations with the western world. The
administration pulled out of the International Criminal Court (ICC), and the Commonwealth.
Methods to dispense his
assertion that Muslims in the country “will be
governed by the law divined by Shariah based on the Quran” would have top
Gambia’s interest on the OIC summit had Jammeh won another term in
office.
Reasons For Public
Outcry
If one may be tempted
to ask as to the reasons of government eye on money over any other form of
relationship the new development “blueprint” is likely to satisfy the doubts.
As it is, The Gambia, a
small sub-tropical country bordered to the north, south and east by Senegal in
West Africa; occupies an area of 10, 689sq km has an 80km coast on the Atlantic
Ocean to the west. Minus 1,300 km2 is of water bodies, agricultural land is
6,550 km2 and the arable land is 588,000 hectares, of which, 334,000 hectares
are under cultivation. It has a forest area of 4750 km2 (47.5 per cent of land
area).
The total population
according to the 2013 National Census was estimated at 1,857,181 inhabitants
with average annual growth rate of 3.1 per cent.
At the household level,
poverty remained flat in the last decade (48.4 per cent in 2010 and 48.65 in
2015) with the 3 per cent GDP growth barely keeping up with population growth.
The number of poor Gambians has risen by over
150,000 in the period and there is a rising rural poverty and a growing gap
between rural and urban Gambia. While the proportion of the households living
below the poverty line is 31.6 per cent in urban areas, the proportion rises to
69.5 per cent for rural Gambia. The rural areas account for 42.2 per cent of
the country’s population, but they hold 60 per cent of its poor.
Gambia according to the
new Minister of Finance and Economic Affairs, Amadou Sanneh, has an unsustainable
public debt, which stands at GMD 48 billion ($ US 1 billion) or 120 per cent of
GDP.
“Because of this, debt
servicing consumes a huge amount of government revenue, leaving very limited
fiscal space for financing critical infrastructure and human capital
development needs and denying our private sector access to finance and credit,
vital for its growth and expansion”, he states in introduction to the country’s
2018-2021 National Development Plan.
