Before The State - Part Five: Who Holds the Seat? By Dave Manneh, Securing Futures: Land Rights Action Collaborative (SFLRAC) 26 October 2026 Clan heads in the Western Region have been selling lineage land without telling their families. The World Bank's 2013 land governance assessment called it "a major concern". Some clans split their land among families to stop the sales. The sales went on. Part Four turned the colonial seat of 1894 to face the kabilo, as the Community Land Board, and...

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....