The relay still signs. Part Two found it in the state's own record: the seyfo and the alkalo administer the land the state claims ownership of, and no transfer of it moves without their mark. The office that endorsed the Kombo Coastal Belt leases in 1970 endorses transfers today. It never stopped. Part One asked by what right the state claims the land. This essay asks the narrower question, the one that falls on the men whose mark moves the land. By what authority was their office ever...

By Dave Manneh, Securing Futures: Land Rights Action Collaborative (SFLRAC) August 10, 2026 On 22 and 23 July, at the DPPH hall on Marina Parade in Banjul, the Ministry of Lands convened a workshop on the legal review of The Gambia's land tenure and land administration laws. The consultant leading the review set out its purpose from the front of the room. The task, the slides said, is to 'harmonise and modernise' the statutes that govern land in The Gambia. Fragmentation across eleven laws....

Legal Notice 2 of 1994, made under section 5(1) of the State Lands Act, carries two operative sentences and a schedule of boundaries. The second designates Kombo North, Kombo South and Kombo Central as State lands with effect from the first day of March 1994. It recites no purchase, no conquest, no inheritance and no consent. One page in the Gazette, and three districts changed landlords on paper. Part One set down the premise and its proof: the state asserted title to the land of the former...