Following 22 years of an autocratic regime that brought the country close to bankruptcy, The Gambia remains a fragile country that must deal with considerable weaknesses in terms of development, infrastructure, and social services.

In conjunction with the IMF, the new Gambian authorities have adopted a reform agenda in order to stabilize the country’s economic situation, restore people’s trust in the government, and strengthen democratic institutions. The country’s rising growth rate suggests that economic recovery is on the right path. However, the heavy public deficit leaves little budget margin for executing the 2018-2021 national development plan adopted in February 2018, and the weight of the public debt continues to threaten the country’s macro-economic stability.

AFD is supporting the reform process via budget support of €5 million, granted in 2018. The aim of this support is to ensure transition towards a new IMF program, especially by helping to launch audits of public enterprises and by proposing technical assistance for future negotiations with the main creditors of the external debt, all the while ensuring coverage of certain health expenditures.
 

Nutrition and food security represent a major challenge for The Gambia’s development: agricultural production covers less than half of the country’s consumption needs, and 73.9% of the rural population lives under the poverty line. Per capita annual consumption of white rice—the basic foodstuff—is 117 kg, yet only 17% of this amount is produced locally.

In order to improve food security and increase rice production, AFD is supporting a small-scale irrigation project in the eastern part of the country (Upper River Region). This project also seeks to enhance gradual expansion of an agriculture that is more entrepreneurial and that implicates young people and women better.
 

The Gambia’s strong demographic growth and rapid urbanization have led to severe hydraulic stress in the major cities and especially in the capital, Banjul, which is experiencing serious water shortages.
Access to drinking water faces a number of challenges: increasing demand, lack of infrastructure, low level of revenue generated by the sector, and the absence of strong structuring in the subsector of urban waterworks. The result is that access to drinking water is a major social, economic, and political issue in the capital and in The Gambia as a whole.

Given this context and its experience in the urban waterworks sector in West Africa, AFD is focusing its aid on the drinking-water sector in the Banjul region. Its objectives are to improve access to drinking water and the quality of service at The Gambia’s National Water and Electricity Company (NAWEC), restore financial equilibrium to the sector, and support NAWEC in development planning for water and sanitation in the Banjul region.