Op-Ed: Postscript on the National Land Policy 2026 to 2035: What the Communities Validated, and What Cabinet Kept
By Dave Manneh, Securing Futures: Land Rights Action Collaborative (SFLRAC)
15 October 2026
In June 2025 I wrote twice about the draft National Land Policy (NLP) 2026 to 2035. I wrote that 'The Ministry listened!', and I counted 'pathways for restitution' among the gains. I measured those gains against the May 2025 Validation Copy, the text that went to national validation at Bijilo on 10 June 2025, where SFLRAC had a representative in the room. This postscript sets that copy beside the version Cabinet approved, dated September 2025 and launched on 22 December 2025.
Most of what I welcomed survived. The approved Policy keeps Certificates of Customary Ownership, free, prior and informed consent, and compensation at replacement value. It adds a test of 'genuine public needs' before the State converts land. Restitution did not survive.
Section 6.7.2 shows how. The Validation Copy titled it 'Expropriation, Compensation and Restitution' and promised 'clear transparent processes for restitution'. The approved Policy titles it 'Expropriation and Compensation' and promises 'clear, transparent processes for expropriation and compensation'. One word replaced another. The clause that restitution for lost tenure rights 'must be considered' is gone, and in its place Cabinet added a new instruction: 'Apply the principle of eminent domain uniformly across all land tenure types.'
The section before it tells the same story. The Validation Copy committed the Government to 'pursue land redistribution and restitution to provide for the disadvantaged and the poor'. The approved Policy pledges 'resettlement measures' in its place. The word restitution now appears once in the whole text, inside the name of a United Nations document the Policy cites.
Cabinet kept the gains that pay for land, and removed the one that would return it.
The texts that build on the Policy repeat its silence. As I set out on 14 October, the draft National Resettlement Policy, which says it 'gives effect to the National Land Policy', runs to seventy-three pages without the word. The Legal Reform Implementation Plan, which will shape the new Lands Act, contains it nowhere. SFLRAC raised that gap in its written comments to the Ministry of Lands on 12 October, and asked that the historical claims of Kombo's kabilolu come first in the reform, ahead of registration.
The Ministry listened in 2025, and I stand by that. Participation, though, shows in what survives the Cabinet table.
Restitution left the land policy by a decision, and a decision can restore it. The Lands Act does not yet exist. In June 2025 I wrote that the fight continues. It still does.
A Note on Sources: The Validation Copy is the National Land Policy 2026 to 2035, May 2025 Draft Version: section 6.7.1 (Redistribution and Resettlement) at pages 96 to 97 and section 6.7.2 at pages 97 to 98. The approved text is the Cabinet-approved National Land Policy (NLP) 2026 to 2035, dated September 2025 over the signatures of the Minister and the Permanent Secretary, and listed in the FAO legal database as The National Land Policy (NLP) 2026 to 2035: section 6.7.1 (Resettlement) at page 107 and section 6.7.2 at page 108.
Free, prior and informed consent sits in section 3.2.1 of both texts (Validation Copy page 35, approved Policy page 36), where the approved Policy adds the public-needs test as clause (e). My June 2025 essays appeared in The Alkamba Times on 9 June 2025 and The Standard on 10 June 2025.
About the Author: Dave Manneh is the Founder and Research Lead of Securing Futures: Land Rights Action Collaborative (SFLRAC), a Gambian think tank working on land tenure and land governance. The full research archive is available at https://securing-futures.org/research
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