President Adama Barrow has enjoined all institutions of the government, state, all stakeholders as well as development partners to redouble their efforts in making Gambian diaspora voting a reality, as deduced from his key address delivered on his behalf by Minister Dr. Badara Alieu Joof.
The Higher Education, Research, Science and Technology boss made the disclosure at the Fifth Stake in the Nation Forum (SNF5) held on Saturday, 8 January 2022, at Sir Dawda Kairaba Jawara Conference Centre in Bijilo.
With the theme, ‘Consolidating and Accelerating National Development’, the SNF5 was organized by Migration and Sustainable Development in the Gambia (MSDG) Project in partnership with GK Partners.
He recalled that at the first edition of SNF on 13 January 2018, “I stated that we must be vigilant for the opportunity of infrastructure-led development and the opportunity of diaspora-development”.
As is to be expected, he told the SNF5 gathering, the diaspora contributed time, resources, and ideas to the work and campaigns of the different political parties and groupings in the presidential elections.
“However, the fact remains that they were not able to vote and be more engaged in the festival of democracy witnessed as a nation. we acknowledge the technical collaboration between the MSDG project and the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) and the contribution of other stakeholders on the issue of diaspora voting.
“With humility and purposefulness, I urged all institutions of government and state and all stakeholder and development partners to redouble efforts to make diaspora voting a reality,” the Gambian leader pointed out in his statement. He also pledged and promised to maintain, expand and enhance Gambia’s infrastructure-led development program.
As the directorate leads the review and updating of the Gambia diaspora strategy in 2022, all institutions are urged to put more emphasis on timely and effective implementation of the commitments “we make in our policy and strategy documents and plans”.
“In many instances, our shortcomings are not due to the absence of good politics and plans, but the absence of effective implementation,” he added, stating the need for operational effectiveness is of paramount importance for all ministries, departments, and agencies, as well as the state-owned enterprises.
“Every Gambian is touched directly or indirectly by the contributions of the diaspora. Whatever their income, be it little, be it large, they share with their families and communities in The Gambia. This is true in times of feast and in time of famine, as evidenced by their increased contributions during the Covid-19 pandemic,” the President acknowledged.
The Gambia’s Minister of Finance and Economic Affairs, Mr. Mambury Njie, in his remarks, thanked the MSDG project team for the tremendous work they have done over the years to attract diaspora investment in The Gambia through the championing of the diaspora bond.
“Our Ministry [MoFEA] continues to partner with the GK Partners through the MSDG project on mainstreaming diaspora finance and introducing innovative financial products to attract diaspora investment,” said Njie.
He told his audience as part of efforts to streamline diaspora bond in their financing strategies, the Debt Management Directorate has prepared a medium-term debt management strategy (2022-2026) that incorporate issuing a diaspora bond for infrastructure financing.
Also speaking, the First Deputy Governor of Central Bank of The Gambia (CBG), Dr. Seeku Jaabi, held the significance of this event “cannot be overemphasized considering the importance of remittances to be the balance of payment of the Gambia and its impact on the livelihood of average Gambians”. The apex bank senior official vouched that despite the challenges of the coronavirus, diaspora Gambians have not relented in supporting their families and enhancing the development aspirations of their motherland.
Dr. Jaabi further said in 2021, the remittance volumes increased to an unprecedented level of $774.6M dollars, from January to December forming 62.9% of our GDP. The 2021 remittance volume is equivalent to GMD 40.65 billion, which represents 69.9% of GDP. He told the gathering that despite the global pandemic, the CBG has considerably improved its data recording methodologies by encouraging market operators to supply relevant data in respect to remittances, adding because of the high accuracy of the data, both the IMF and World Bank now rely on the Central Bank of The Gambia data as the authoritative data for analysis and reporting.
First Deputy Governor Jaabi went on to disclose that the CBG is further working on remittances with partners to dis-aggregate the data into building and construction, consumption, education, health, agriculture, among others, to inform policy on the use of remittances.
