By Yero S. Bah
Ms. Ramatoulie Jallow is a strong business development professional who founded the Smiling Coast Tourism (SCT) – a Tech Start-up that builds “an array of tourism products in the Gambia to enhance the tourists’ experience”.
“One of our products is www.smileafric.com; a hotel booking site and one stop shop for tourism information in the Gambia. This is our first product that is in the market already. It is first of its kind in The Gambia where tourists from anywhere in the world can search, find and book hotel rooms, apartments, guest houses, lodges etc, read reviews and see ratings of their accommodation choice,” SCT posted on its facebook page.
Meanwhile, speaking to Mansa Banko Online’s reporter at her Office located on Kairaba Avenue, adjacent to PURA headquarters, Ms. Jallow, who is said to have a “demonstrated history” of working in the hospitality industry, stated that they [at Smiling Coast Tourism] build several tourism products and services, one of which is smileafric.com that helps potential tourists to book their hotel rooms or holiday homes and get access to other tourism services on the platform.
Jallow said she got the inspiration when she read about the Gambia winning a huge tourism award in 2019 in Europe, and she was impressed by that national achievement. She then decided to work towards retaining that excellence in the tourism industry, as she told this medium, “The Gambia being a smaller nation among her peers, winning something like that was inspiring”.
The third-year student of Bachelor’s degree in Economics at the University of The Gambia claimed she saw a loophole in Gambian industry in terms of access to information and booking platforms that are locally run by Gambians at home. She was encouraged to go into creating such platforms that tourists could easily access and make their bookings or inquiries about the country.
“Tourists could only book Gambian hotels using international booking sites; we already have so much money going out of the country,” the SCT founder lamented. Jallow acknowledged tourism as the main foreign currency earner for the Gambia, and that Gambians use international currencies to import goods and services into this country.
Therefore, she argued that one couldn’t overemphasize the importance of the tourism sector for the local economy of the country, adding employment wise, the sector employs over twenty two thousand (over 200,000) people during the peak of the tourism season.
The techpreneur pointed to lack of finance as one the biggest challenges her Start-up adventure faces, admitting it’s difficult to come across people who could help. She continued to say for Start-ups in the Gambia, financial handicap is a general problem, describing the whole dilemma as “cancerous”.
In her view, the lack of financial support for youth entrepreneurs in the country is due to government failures. The Start-up founder reminded that all what the youth need when starting some businesses is capital, and that’s why such aids should come from the government to help youth create job opportunities for citizenry. But she echoed: “We do not need handouts. We are not asking for everything; we just need something to start up.”
According to her, most Gambians don’t believe in the youth because most of the people who could extend helping hands are “stingy” in most cases and they would just offer verbal support, and that is if you are among the lucky few. She suggested that government should come up with a fund for youth entrepreneurs with just one condition, to wit: beneficiaries shall not refund government if they succeed, but they shall refund [the money] if they messed up the funds. Jallow is positive that with such a fund in place for entrepreneurs, it would help government in tackling unemployment and contribute to the national coffers through the payment of taxes.
She told this medium during the interview, that her vision in the next decade is to be present in the entire African continent. But her messages to the youth folk is “to believe in themselves”, while she particularly enjoined entrepreneurs to concentrate on the impacts they could create for society.
