Geofile Tourism in the Gambia

APRIL 2001 Online 404 Geofile Steve Lee Tourism and Development in the Gambia

When Britain was the colonial power, totalled $14m – approximately 60% of The Gambia: a profile there was little investment in health GDP. The problem was linked to Surrounded on three sides by or education. Given the continued over-dependency on one product, French-speaking Senegal, which is poverty of the Gambia, this problem groundnuts (peanuts). more the 17 times larger, the has continued in the period since Gambia is a long, thin country, independence. The female literacy Traditionally the production of 350km from west to east, but no rate is 22.7%, male 50.9%, partly as a groundnuts had been the dominant more than 48km wide. The result of there having been only one economic activity. Being a cash crop, country’s main geographical feature school in the whole of the Gambia groundnut cultivation tended to be is the River Gambia. during the 1950s. There was adopted by men, whereas agriculture considerable restructuring of the in general is largely (as much as 70%) The Gambia has a population of 1.1 education system in 1992, to the undertaken by women. The Gambia m and is one of the smallest and extent that all children go to primary was once described as a non-viable most densely populated countries of school for six years, terminating with monoculture. However, the tropical Africa. With a GNP per a leaving certificate examination, dominance of groundnuts on the capita of $320 (UK = $14,570, which in part helps select who will go Gambian economy has been receding Senegal = $650) and a human on to the limited secondary school rapidly for some time due to the fall development index of 0.281 (UK = placements. Many children are in international prices for the 0.931) the Gambia is also one of the precluded from secondary education product, as a result of agricultural world’s poorest countries. The for economic reasons, poverty being surpluses elsewhere. annual population growth rate of such in some areas that many cannot 3.9% is the highest in West Africa, afford even the most basic equipment Against this background, the Gambia putting pressure on the country’s such as pencils. Even so, there is a introduced an IMF/World Bank- limited resources. While 74% of the general acceptance amongst inspired economic recovery population live in rural areas, and Gambians at all levels of society that programme, which at its core had the 82% of the labour force is employed education is the key to a way out of recognition of the role of tourism in in agriculture, the urban population poverty. The Gambia opened its first the economic development process of growth rate of 6.3% for the period university in 1999, which will help the country, in terms of foreign 1980 to 1995 indicates the type of keep more of its educated young exchange earnings and other demographic shift evident people in the country. benefits. throughout most of the developing world. Economic activity The Gambia is a multi-party The 10-year period following democracy which achieved independence was one of prosperity, Morocco independence from the UK in 1965. with the economy growing at 4% p.a. Algeria Western English is the official language, on average. Inflation was low, foreign Sahara though the vast majority speak only debt small and the government Mauritania their tribal languages. Mandinka, budget in balance. From the mid- Mali Niger Wolof and Jola are the principal 1970s, however, this healthy trend The Senegal cultural groups. was reversed, with economic Gambia Guinea problems reaching a head in 1985 Guinea Bissau Burkina Faso when foreign debt repayment arrears Nigeria Sierra Coteˆ Liberia Leone D'Ivoire Ghana Benin Figure 1: The Gambia, and its place in West Africa Togo 14°W 15°W 14°W to Kaolack and Dakar

SENEGAL Toubakouta Nioro du rip amb Kau-ur r G i a ve Ri Kuntaur

Georgetown Bakau Farafenni Fajara Fort James Mansa Bara Kerewan Serekunda Island TTendabaendaba KKonkaonka Sukuta BANJUL Kwinella Soma Bansang Ghana Juffre Genieri Town Brufut Lamin MacCarthy Fatoto Island Keneba Sankandi Basse Santa Su Brikama Kafuta Bwiam Gambissara Gunjur SENEGAL Bulok Velingara´ SENEGAL 0 30km (Hauta-Casamance) Medina Gounas (Basse Casamance) to Ziguinchor to Ziguinchor ° 14°W 15°W 14°W 13 W

Geofile Online © Nelson Thornes 2001 April 2001 no.404 Tourism and Development in the Gambia

Figure 2: Gross domestic product (in Dalasi millions)

Industrial origin 1990/91 1991/92 1992/93 1993/94 1994/95 1995/96 1996/97

Agriculture 106.70 119.18 105.91 118.84 117.82 121.50 117.15

Groundnuts 26.69 30.16 19.66 27.50 28.96 26.94 16.42 Other crops 45.71 54.03 48.08 2.89 48.55 52.51 56.23 Livestock 24.24 25.13 26.14 26.85 27.89 29.00 30.16 Forestry 2.55 2.63 2.71 2.80 2.92 3.33 3.47 Fishing 7.51 7.23 9.32 8.80 9.50 9.72 10.87

Industry 61.89 62.98 67.07 69.95 61.55 64.84 66.57

Manufacturing 31.63 31.51 33.09 34.55 33.57 32.94 33.81 Construction & mining 27.16 28.31 30.57 31.82 24.32 28.23 28.65 Electricity & water 3.10 3.16 3.41 3.58 3.66 3.67 4.11

Services 296.50 307.37 319.01 334.67 314.82 327.80 343.97

Trade 85.10 87.40 89.80 81.09 80.55 74.25 72.09 Groundnut trade 9.50 10.26 8.73 12.90 13.93 13.03 8.73 Other trade 75.60 77.14 81.07 68.19 66.62 61.22 63.36 Hotels & restaurants 22.52 23.53 23.49 33.13 15.69 20.39 22.12 Transport & communication 77.52 86.63 90.18 104.06 105.55 118.41 131.52 Real estate & business 33.10 33.92 34.78 35.67 35.25 36.30 37.79 Services 56.50 57.63 58.68 60.23 59.65 60.71 62.48 Government services 21.76 21.76 22.08 20.49 18.13 17.24 17.97

GDP factor cost 465.90 489.53 491.99 523.46 494.19 514.15 527.69 Indirect taxes (net) 70.07 74.79 74.80 68.92 70.52 67.54 65.26 GDP at constant market 538.16 564.32 566.79 592.38 564.71 581.69 592.95 prices

Source: Central Statistics Department Tourism in two hotels in the capital, Banjul, northern European countries. which then had a capacity of 250 Numbers temporarily dropped by It has been widely accepted over the beds. By 1993/94 the number of half in 1994, following a bloodless past few decades that tourism can be guests had risen to 130,000, with coup by the military, when the a tool for development in developing around 90,000 of these arriving from British Foreign Office advised countries, a way of weaning economies off overdependence on limited traditional exports. This Figure 3: Benefits of tourism type of development programme invariably involves the borrowing of According to the World Tourism Organisation, benefits accrued from tourism include: money, always at high rates of • Export earnings International tourism is the world’s largest export earner and an interest. The Gambia has been no important factor in the balance of payments of many countries. Global foreign exception and, as a recipient currency receipts outstrip exports of petroleum products, motor vehicles, country, is under huge pressure to telecommunications equipment, textiles or any other product or service. repay (40% or 50% of current GDP • Employment Travel and tourism employ an estimated 100 million people around is used just to service current debt). the world. The vast majority of tourism jobs are in small or medium-sized family owned enterprises. Research shows that job creation in tourism is growing 1_ times Foreign currency receipts from faster than in any other industrial sector. tourism can be an important means • Rural opportunities Tourism jobs and businesses can be created in the most of economic development. For underdeveloped regions of a country, providing an incentive for residents to remain example, the emerging Asian in rural areas rather than moving to overcrowded cities. economies found tourism to be an important source of finance for • Infrastructure investment Travel and tourism stimulate enormous investment in capital goods imports during their new infrastructure, most of which helps to improve the living conditions of local residents as well as tourists. Tourism development projects often include airports, industrialisation process. Tourism roads, marinas, sewerage systems, water treatment plants, restoration of cultural contributes 12% of Gambian GNP monuments, museums and nature interpretation centres. and employs more than 35,000 people. • Tax revenues The tourism industry provides governments with extra tax revenues each year through accommodation and restaurant taxes, airport taxes, sales taxes, park entrance fees, employee income tax and many other fiscal matters. The development of the Gambia as an international tourist destination • Gross Domestic Product (GDP) International and domestic tourism combined started with the arrival of 300 guests generate up to 10% of the world’s GDP and a considerably higher share in many from Sweden in 1965. They stayed small nations and developing countries.

Geofile Online © Nelson Thornes 2001 April 2001 no.404 Tourism and Development in the Gambia tourists not to travel. The number management positions – even in Environment (the ‘Rio Summit’). of guests had already recovered by Gambian-owned hotels, these are This 27-principle action plan was the winter season of 1996/97. There reserved for foreign nationals. signed by 182 governments who are now over 15 hotels in the ‘tourist The Gambia provides an ideal committed to the implementation of development area’ (TDA), with a location for the development of sustainable development in the 21st capacity of around 7,000 beds. The tourism, catering for Europeans who century. TDA, with its infrastructure, was want to exchange the cold and gloom developed between 1975 and 1980 of a northern winter for guaranteed Bearing these principles in mind, it with assistance from UNDP and sunshine and temperatures of can be seen that tourism in the financial assistance from the around 30°C. Some 112,800 tourists Gambia is not being managed in a International Development visited the country in the 1988/89 sustainable way at present. The Association. tourist season. With an estimated negative social and cultural side- average expenditure per tourist of effects are numerous: sex tourism, Problems of tourism $400, this amounted to about $45 drug abuse, child begging and most While it cannot be denied that million, representing 10% or more of evident and difficult to avoid, the tourism is a highly important national GDP. In recent years over problem of the ‘bumsters’. These are contributor to Gambian half of all tourists have come from unemployed young men who hang development efforts, an increasingly Britain, and the remainder from around beaches and other areas, recognised fact concerning tourism Scandinavia (mostly Sweden), latching onto tourists and trying to and developing countries in general France and Germany. sell them drinks, trinkets or is the imbalance of economic reward anything else, or to arrange trips, in for the host country vis-à-vis the Sustainable development the hope of a tip; a by-product of the donor country. In short, very little extremely high (75%) of what is spent by tourists filters and its application to the unemployment. They are generally through to local economies. The Gambia quite inoffensive and harmless, but three principal benefactors of most European visitors are ‘Sustainable development’ has now tourism tend to be international unaccustomed to this kind of become the development paradigm hotel chains, tour operators and attention and find it unwelcome. of the 1990s. The term is used by airlines – usually these are foreign This lifestyle also attracts children aid agencies, development planners organisations. They control away from school. As a response to and environmental activists alike in procurement of customers, these problems within the Gambian their policies. The most widely used transportation and food and lodging. tourist industry, the government definition of sustainable launched a National Policy for development comes from the 1987 At best, a developing economy can Tourism Development document in Brundtland Report, ‘Our common expect to receive not more than 50% December 1996 to address key future’, produced by the World of the money spent for a holiday, issues. These were principally: a Commission on Environment and even if the hotel is locally owned. In commitment to more Gambian Development: the case of the Gambia, where ‘all- partners in decision-making inclusive’ holidays are common and processes, reducing foreign exchange four out of five hotels are either ‘Sustainable Development is development leakages, and the training of tourist foreign or part foreign-owned, the that meets the needs of the present guides. The document also without compromising the ability of future economy makes less than 20%. generations to meet their own needs.’ acknowledged a need to diversify Some hotels earn as little as £4 per (WCEC 1987, p. 49). into ‘alternative forms of tourism’. night per person. Hotel workers earn The National Environment Agency as little as £1 per day and are laid off The Brundtland view was enshrined (NEA), which is charged with for the five-month wet season. in Agenda 21, which emerged from implementation of the Gambian Gambians rarely occupy the 1992 UN Conference on Action Plan 1992–2001, has advised the government that ‘ecotourism’ Figure 4: Problems arising from tourism could help alleviate some of the pressures on land from agricultural • Environmental damage For example, the area around Mt Everest in Nepal is strewn expansion, by offering an alternative with litter left by trekkers, and precious forests have been used to build hotels and income and raising awareness of the lodges and as fuel for guests. value of conserving natural • People are displaced The Masai were excluded from their traditional grazing lands. resources. Dislocated from their homelands, these people (who are often given no compensation) are forced into a more settled lifestyle, leading to poverty. Fishing communities are no longer allowed to fish at beach resorts. In Burma, people are Ecotourism being forcibly removed from their land to make way for a national park. Golf Ecotourism can be seen as a niche courses have been built on precious agricultural land in Bali. within the tourist industry catering • The sex industry Children are forced to work as prostitutes in Thailand and for those wanting to get first-hand elsewhere. experience of aspects of the natural world in a low-density, high- • Traditions have been debased Ancient burial ground and culturally significant adrenalin environment. Whale- sites have been bulldozed to make way for hotels and resorts. Indigenous peoples are often seen as exotic objects and are expected to perform traditional music and watching in Canada, trekking in dance for tourists. Nepal, scuba-diving in the Red Sea and bird-watching in Israel are • Conflicts have resulted over the distribution of resources In Goa hotels examples of tourism directly linked consume water that is needed for local agriculture. to the environment and marketed

Figure 5: Aims of Gambian tourism in the capital Banjul, 60km away. benefit from the community projects Outward indicators of lack of ready it will pay for. Priorities are seen as • focused on the Gambia’s natural access to healthcare are problems providing access to education for the resources, culture and history • aids conservation efforts and does relating to eyesight and poorly set village children, and health care for not impact negatively on natural limbs. all. resources • generates economic activity and Housing in Tumani Tenda is Whilst the appeal of this type of retains income locally in a sustainable way, particularly in rural primarily thatched roofs supported ecotourism experience would in a economies by mud walls. For the dry part of the large part be limited to students of • is alternative to the existing sun-sea- year most activity takes place biodiversity and rural economies sand tourism on the coast outside. All meals are cooked and life in tropical regions, it does • encourages positive cultural outside, and washing is done by the offer a viable alternative to a beach exchange and minimises negative social impacts river. There is no electricity. holiday for those visitors wishing to • provides an element of education or Family sizes are average for the see life beyond the travel brochure. awareness-raising for visitors and Gambia, at six to eight children, Gambian nationals. with the eldest son being the only The extent to which cash generated one to stand any chance of an from this type of tourist experience Source: ‘Ecotourism in The Gambia’, a discussion paper on the issues to be addressed by an ecotourism education. can in any meaningful way strategy, p. 12 contribute to economic development In 1997 the village won a national is doubtful. Yet as an insight to accordingly. The Gambia is a prime competition for its forest and garden sustainability and sensitively site for ornithologists – the country, projects. The prize was 70,000 managed ecosystems, it has much with an attractive and diverse rain Dalasi (about £4,000) worth of value. forest environment, is home to over equipment which they could choose. 500 species of bird. A collective decision was made to Bibliography invest this equipment into providing Binns, T. Tropical Africa, Routledge. Ecotourism at Tumani Tenda a basic tourist development to cater The first rural community to for environmentally orientated visitors. A further donation of 9,000 WCED (1987) Tourism Concern UK complete an ecotourism and the Gambia, WCED. development was Tumani Tenda, Dalasi from VSO enabled which opened in January 1999. construction of the huts and toilet Gambian Chamber of Commerce, facilities to start, reaching The Entrepreneur. Tumani Tenda is situated in a completion for its visitors in January clearing in the forest by the Kafita 1999. Being a village initiative, all Balong, a tributary of the River the money made through the Gambia. It is a village of 300 people, ecotourism scheme can be used to predominantly Muslim subsistence enhance the local economy and the farmers. Agricultural produce quality of life of the people of the include sweet potatoes, onions, village. brassicas, rice, peppers and tomatoes as well as plantains and fruit on Visitors are encouraged to take part trees. Virtually all of the arable in agricultural activities, fishing and work is undertaken by women – this cooking in the local style, as well as can be very demanding, as irrigation participating in guided tours of the systems still rely on water being local environment. The scheme is drawn from wells for a large part of run by a number of committees e.g. the year. There is no rainfall from entertainment, security, cooking, October to May. Protein is obtained cleaning and waste management (a through stock rearing, cattle and key issue in a settlement without any goats and fishing the saltwater sanitary infrastructure along western Kafita Balong with drop nets. Stock lines). The whole village was rearing and fishing are male involved in building the camp. preserves, a traditional gender role None of the staff are paid wages – throughout large parts of Africa. they are satisfied that they will The river banks are a morass of mangroves, the roots of which act as Focus Questions a further source of protein. The quality and abundance of foodstuffs 1. Define the following terms: demographic shift, multi-party for this virtually self-sufficient democracy, cultural group, inflation, indigenous peoples, ecotourism. village (rice being the only import of note) account for the health and 2. Explain the likely problems to a country’s economy of being dependent longevity of its population – almost on a single export product. 10 years above the national average – and assume massive significance in 3. Describe the range of problems posed by non-sustainable tourism. the absence of orthodox healthcare. The nearest doctor is 30km away, in 4. In what ways can the industrial profile of the Gambia be seen as typical Brikama, and the nearest hospital is for a poor country?