Life in Gambia

Olalekan Raji attended WJI Europe in 2024. Since then, he’s worked with WORLD’s Global Desk to cover news out of Africa. He partnered with Jenny Lind Schmitt on this month’s cover package, “Energy hogs,” about how Western climate policies hinder countries like the Republic of the Gambia from accessing the energy they need to develop and prosper.

Gambia is in the process of modernizing. Describe what your daily living conditions are like. The country has a fine sandy coastline along the Atlantic Ocean running about 50 miles. It’s a lovely little country for a writer—one of the few in Africa where you can enjoy peaceful long walks, and because of that, lots of European tourists visit every summer. Extremely low industrialization makes the cost of living very high, and I am lucky to live in Kotu, which is a suburb close to the capital, Banjul, and the beach.

Are electricity shortages a constant problem? How do you deal with them? For a couple of hours every two weeks, the power goes off. The bulk of electricity supply in Gambia is centered around the Greater Banjul Area where you have the hotels and malls that cater to the tourists. My wife doesn’t like the noise that generators make, so we just sit out the darkness outdoors under the trees.

How do these problems affect people’s daily lives and their plans for the future? Plenty of women and older folks commute from the rural areas daily to work in the city. But the majority of youths like Buakar Bah, who’s featured in the story, work so they can save up enough money to travel the deadly “Backway,” a local term for illegal immigration that involves trekking on foot through the desert and boarding overcrowded wooden boats to Europe across the Mediterranean Sea. In 2024, nearly 900 of them drowned.

You’re not originally from Gambia. What took you there? I came over from Nigeria in 2022 to start a church. Christians have had a presence here for more than a century. There’s an old Methodist church that’s been around since 1835. But sharing the gospel is a struggle. According to U.S. State Department estimates, 96.4% of Gambia’s population is Muslim. It gives a feeling of prerevolution Iran or Turkey before the Ottoman Empire. I am Pentecostal, and to be honest, we’re not exactly welcomed with open arms here.

In addition to energy access, what are some of the continent’s other significant challenges? Education and democracy. A long history of military coups, despots, and sit-tight rulers have greatly weakened institutions of government in many African countries. This fuels corruption. Some of these rulers spend more money on upholding their regimes than the budgets for educating their citizenry. Education helps people and societies to develop a better quality of life.