Kenyan athletes swept the golden prizes in the ever-growing Gambia international marathon, sponsored by Africell. The East Africans won both the male and female 42 Kilometer race with Dennis Kibiwot taking the male crown dethroning Gambian Lebage Sanneh the 2023 champion. Another Kenyan, Geoffrey Birgen came second while a Cameroonian Foimi Justic took bronze. With that decided, attention shifted to the women’s 42-kilometer race won by another Kenyan, Jane Jerono Rorich. But the second and third place in this category went to Gambians Mariama S Bah and Ndeye Gaye respectively. The reminder of ..read more

By Olimatou Coker As part of its efforts to support children in education, most especially those that trek long distances to school on a daily basis, Saama Kairo Federation in  partnership with ChildFund The Gambia has Thursday donated 218 pedal bicycles worth D1.8 million to their sponsored and enrolled children who currently endure long distances to reach school. This initiative aims to alleviate the transportation challenges faced by the students, enabling them to access education more easily while promoting physical activity and well-being. Sunkaru Jatta, the Manager of Saama Kairo Fe ..read more

By Saidou Baldeh The Nigerian troops serving the Ecowas mission in The Gambia on Saturday conducted a medical outreach at the State Central Prison (Mile II) where dozens of inmates and prison officials benefited from the free treatment. Receiving the Nigerian troops at the prison, Lamin Sowe, Commissioner of Operations Gambia Prisons Service, said the medical outreach has come at the right time describing the inmates as needy people who are confined by law. “The prisons have more needy people and today there was not a single medicine in the Mile 2. Your intervention is timely because some pris ..read more

The Gambian leader through his Presidential Adviser, Momodou Sabally, has restored water supply for Banjulinding women gardeners who have been endlessly calling for interventions over the years. President Barrow supported the women to restore water supply in their garden to increase their productivity which has been a constraint for a long time due to inadequate water supply. During his visit to the garden over the weekend to assess the level of work, the gardeners received the Presidential Adviser  with a rousing welcome expressing delight over the president’s intervention. The vice pres ..read more

By Alieu SK Manjang For the past eight years following the fall of Jammeh’s regime, existed in social media has been all-embracing discussion about the temptation to ditch one’s social identity as a compulsory stair towards nurturing our democracy and re-clueing our social ties, which are being ripped by tribalism-garmented in politics. This temptation is recently honed amid the call for disregarding tribes in the upcoming national censuses to take place in May 2024. Hence, adopting The Gambia as an umbrella term that includes all tribes is suggested to be sufficient to reflect our socio-polit ..read more

By Tabora Bojang Chief Justice Hassan Jallow has urged members of the Ecowas Judicial Council currently meeting in Banjul to consider vesting the Ecowas Court with the jurisdiction to prosecute all persons who commit serious international crimes such as genocide and crimes against humanity. “We need to collectively take ownership of the process of accountability for serious crimes through our local/national and regional institutions. Where, as often happens, national institutions are unable to exercise jurisdiction for reasons of capacity or legal obstacles we should be able to fall back on a ..read more

Brody reacts to gov’t legislations to try former president By Omar Bah With the Gambia government now putting mechanisms to prosecute exiled former president Yahya Jammeh and henchmen, American human rights lawyer Reed Brody has expressed hope that Equatorial Guinea will be open to release Jammeh to be prosecuted if they are requested to do so. Last week, the National Assembly passed two bills expected to pave way for the prosecution of crimes committed during the Jammeh regime. The Special Accountability Mechanism (TRRC) Bill and the Special Prosecutors Office Bill are intended to provide fr ..read more

The proverbs quoted below are ever so true. Corruption is the worst enemy of a reasonable cost and standard of living. It impedes development, enhances inequality and undermines the stability of a society. It is induced and sustained through an opaque procurement system of a transactional government that lacks transparency in the process of acquiring goods and services for the state. Such goods include infrastructural developments (roads, bridges and buildings), the purchase of goods and commodities (energy, vehicles, food items) and provision of services (media advertising schemes, project fe ..read more

For the past few weeks extreme heat has been recorded in the West African sub-region. Experts have said that this is linked to climate change which is affecting almost everything in the world nowadays. Many countries and international organisations are doing a great deal to combat this problem. They are doing this in different ways such as creating awareness among the people of the world, making efforts to safeguard forest covers and planting of as many trees as possible. Here in the Gambia, one menace that contributes to climate change is bush burning. In rural Gambia, many villages find the ..read more

By Aminata S Kuyteh In his latest updates on preparations for this weekend’s OIC summit, the Chief Executive Officer of the OIC Gambia Secretariat Yankuba Dibba, has disclosed that because of lack of adequate parking space at the Banjul International Airport some aircraft belonging to high-profile delegates attending the summit would be parked at the old Yoff Airport in Dakar, Senegal. Ambassador Dibba, who was addressing the weekly government press conference, was however quick to dismiss suggestions that this arrangement has to do with problems of accommodation in The Gambia, arguing that t ..read more