Op-Ed: Participatory Policymaking in Practice: Community Voices in The Gambia's Land Reform
- Dave Manneh
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
By Dave Manneh - Research Lead Securing Futures: Land Rights Action Collaborative
What does it mean to own the earth beneath your feet? For Kombo's landowning communities, this question has become existential. Every sunrise threatens their ancestral lands with seizure, their families with dispossession, their heritage with erasure.
These communities fight a David versus Goliath battle for the restoration of their inheritance and justice. For centuries, their ancestors owned these lands outright; yet, colonial frameworks and subsequent state nationalisation stripped them of this ownership, turning them into leasees on their ancestral land. As advocates, Securing Futures: Land Rights Action Collaborative (SFLRAC) amplifies voices of communities whose connection to land stretches back generations.
When we first reviewed the February 2025 Draft National Land Policy, our hearts sank. The document triggered déjà vu: another policy that spoke about communities rather than with them. The State Lands Act 1991 haunted every page like a colonial ghost, threatening to transform customary landowners into tenants in their own homeland.
A Glimmer of Hope
Yet, something remarkable happened: The Ministry listened!
SFLRAC adopted a community-centred approach, collaborating with a cross-section of Kombonkas to ensure authentic grassroots participation in the policy recommendations development process. Our partnerships with Kombo Yiriwa Kafo Diaspora chapter and Kombo Canbeng Kafo proved crucial when engaging with the national policy team.
Mr Abdou B. Touray, National Lead Consultant for the National Land Policy Formulation Process, and his team were not only accessible but genuinely receptive to our recommendations. This collaborative spirit marked a departure from decades of top-down policymaking that excluded the very communities most affected by land governance decisions.
The commitment from Kombo Yiriwa Kafo's Gambian branch proved particularly extraordinary. They dedicated an entire Sunday with the land policy formulation team, working through the latest policy version with them. This level of engagement reflects both the organisation's dedication and the respect they command in the policy development process.
The transformation was remarkable. The May 2025 Validation Copy reads like a completely different document. The Ministry incorporated approximately 82% of SFLRAC's key recommendations into policy language. After decades of officials talking at communities, Kombonkas finally experienced genuine hearing. This version is now ready for national validation on 10th June 2025.
Consider what this means in practice: A grandmother in Kartong who has tended the same plot for forty years can now secure a Certificate of Customary Ownership (CCO). She gains formal recognition for her land rights, once trapped in legal limbo. The policy's embrace of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) prevents developers from steamrolling communities with hollow promises. It promises compensation at replacement value for expropriated lands and pathways for restitution. If properly implemented, these measures could fundamentally alter the landscape of land acquisition and safeguard vulnerable communities.
These victories represent lifelines for families who have watched neighbours displaced, traditional farming practices dismissed as "inefficient," and protests labelled as "obstacles to development."
Persistent Dangers
Yet cautious optimism cannot blind us to persistent threats. The State Lands Act 1991 survives intact; policymakers merely proposed "amendments" rather than abolishing this unjustifiable legislation entirely.
This poses a fundamental problem. The Act grants the Minister of Lands sweeping powers to seize any land simply by declaring it serves a "public purpose." No genuine community consultation required. No meaningful appeals process. Just ministerial decree.
We have witnessed this playbook repeatedly: officials declare land needed for tourism development, only for landowners to see exclusive enclaves for elites cropping up. They proclaim sites for new schools, markets, clinics, and public amenities that mysteriously transform into private homes for the connected.
The Validation Copy did not meet our demand for an immediate moratorium on such discretionary land allocations. Without this protection, communities remain vulnerable to the same abuses that have plagued them for decades. Guidelines mean nothing without enforcement mechanisms and political will. When powerful business interests clash with community land rights, recent history shows us which side typically wins.
Human Stories Behind Policy
Behind every bureaucratic discussion lives human tragedy. Officials seized Fatou's family rice paddies for a "tourism development" that never materialised. Lamin's grandfather watched authorities transform his farm into a housing estate through dubious "compulsory acquisition."
The Validation Copy commits to transparency, which offers hope. But transparency without accountability becomes performative politics. Public disclosure means nothing if people lack power to challenge decisions.
Digital Promises, Analogue Realities
Digitising land records through a unified Land Information System (LIS) sounds modern but raises inclusion concerns. In a country where adult literacy hovers around 50% and many communities lack electricity; how will digital systems serve those who need protection most?
Technology can democratise access or erect new barriers that favour educated elites. Success depends on whether systems amplify community voices or drown them in digital noise. The real test lies in ensuring that digital transformation serves justice rather than exclusion.
The Test Ahead
Communities judge policies by outcomes, not promises. The Gambia's history overflows with beautiful documents that collected dust whilst injustices persisted.
What makes this different?
The answer lies in sustained vigilance. Land justice demands continuous struggle that requires constant pressure, monitoring, and advocacy. We have celebrated improvements whilst keeping our eyes fixed on implementation challenges ahead.
Beyond Legal Reform
The land struggle represents something larger: decolonising our relationship with earth itself. Colonial frameworks treated land as empty space that awaited "development." Indigenous worldviews see land as ancestor, and sacred trust for future generations.
True justice requires fundamental shifts in how we conceptualise ownership, development, and progress. It means we must choose community sovereignty over elite capture, ecological wisdom over extractive economics.
The Road Forward
The May 2025 Validation Copy offers cautious optimism, but optimism without action becomes wishful thinking. Every provision requires vigilant monitoring. Every challenge demands community response.
To our allies: This moment matters. Policy improvements represent cracks in seemingly impenetrable walls. We can seal or widen these cracks. The choice belongs to us.
To policymakers: Words mean nothing without implementation commitment. Communities watch. History watches. Justice delivered, not promises made, will measure your legacy.
To international partners: Support doesn't end with policy approval. The hardest work lies ahead. Stay engaged. Stay accountable.
The fight continues. We have won battles, but the war remains far from over. Every acre we protect, every family we secure, every community we empower brings us closer to a future where land serves people rather than power, where heritage matters more than profit.
The earth beneath our feet remembers every injustice and every victory. Let us ensure the stories it tells future generations chronicle courage, community, and triumph over systems designed to divide and dispossess.
The path to land justice winds through thorny terrain, but we walk it together, guided by ancestral wisdom and sustained by unshakeable hope.
Securing Futures: Land Rights Action Collaborative (SFLRAC) is an NGO-think tank hybrid. Committed to empowering Kombo’s dispossessed land-owning communities, SFLRAC combines participatory action with rigorous research to secure ancestral land rights, advocate for equitable governance policies, protect cultural heritage, and advance sustainable development.
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