Islamic investment, influence looms over Christians in the Gambia

BANJUL, Gambia—The country’s newest overhead bridge casts midday shade on Mohammed Barry’s coffee cart, evoking feelings as bittersweet as his brews. Barry’s usual spot at Kairaba Avenue, the Gambia’s equivalent of Wall Street, recently received a facelift from the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). At the intergovernmental organization’s 15th Islamic Summit, which the Gambia hosted in May 2024, the group committed to building 20 new roads in the capital area.

Many residents welcome the OIC’s construction of critical and needed infrastructure in mainland Africa’s smallest nation, which has around 2.4 million people. The Human Development Index lists the Gambia as 174 out of 193 countries, with no significant improvement over the past five years, despite its political stability compared to its neighbors. But the improvements have also sparked concerns for some members of the predominantly Muslim country’s 3.5% Christian minority.

Established in 1969, the OIC has the second most member countries of any global organization after the United Nations, with 57 states spread over four continents. The group describes itself as “the collective voice of the Muslim world” with an aim to “safeguard and protect” Muslims’ interests while advocating for international peace.

The Gambia gained independence from Britain in 1965 and became a republic in 1970. About 44% of the population lives in poverty.

“The Gambia I would like to see and live in seems to be taking shape. This looks really nice and I want more of this,” Barry, 38, said about the overhead bridge, one of the first in the country. But he acknowledged the project has its downsides. “It has really affected my coffee selling business because the customers in cars don’t stop by the roadside anymore since the bridge was opened,” he said. “They just zip past overhead.”

It is unclear if the OIC’s spending in the Gambia is aid or investment. The group declined a request for comment. Proposed construction of a $100 million Radisson Blu hotel designated to house the participants of the 2024 Summit is mired in a funding controversy. The OIC’s Gambia Secretariat CEO, Yankuba Dibba, claims it is no longer an OIC project. Gambian President Adama Barrow laid the foundation stone in July 2022, but there was no further work on the construction.

According to the U.S. Department of State’s Office of International Religious Freedom, most of those identified as Christian in the Gambia are Roman Catholic. Many of them are concerned that OIC’s commitments go beyond economic investments.

Julien Bisenty Mendy is the general secretary of Fellowship of Evangelical Students of Gambia, a nondenominational organization that coordinates the activities of Christian fellowships in college campuses across the nation. He said that Gambian Christians began to anticipate problems in 2015, when then-President Yahya Jammeh declared the Gambia an Islamic republic despite the country’s secular constitution.

“But the church prayed, and he was removed,” Mendy said. “Yet the current president doesn’t seem to have learned from his predecessor’s experience.”

In 2020, a majority of members of the Gambia’s National Assembly rejected a draft for a new constitution. They disagreed over several of its provisions, including a limited presidential term and using the word “secular” to describe the Gambian state.

“We are seeing a recent and powerful lobby for an Islamization agenda, which will never be achieved,” Mendy said. “Persecution of Christians is subtle but deeply entrenched in Gambia’s institutions.”

Last May, the organization Gambia Participates brought together government officials, political parties, the Gambia Supreme Islamic Council, the Gambia Christian Council, members of parliament, and other civil groups at the OIC secretariat. They discussed the country’s constitution, which is yet to be passed since the stalemate in 2020. Attendees talked about Shariah versus secular law but ended discussions of the topic without a decision. Some hope that lawmakers will pass the new constitution in 2025 since it received a first reading in the parliament in December 2024.

Mendy said that religious differences did not cause conflict before Jammeh’s 2015 declaration of an Islamic republic. “But lately there is all kinds of polarity and division. You can’t push an Islamic agenda without radicalizing the minds of people,” Mendy said. “This is a subtle strategy to stop conversion of Muslims to Christians and then start to prosecute those who do [convert].”

Edward Mendy (no relation to Julien) is the immediate past president of the Campus Fellowship at University of The Gambia, the country’s only public university. He pointed out that there are no Christian lawmakers in the National Assembly. “They are all Muslims,” he said. “It won’t be out of place to say it is God Himself that is representing Christian rights in the Gambia.”

In an appearance before a National Assembly committee in April 2024, the Gambia Christian Council spoke about the steady decline of government funding and a sudden withdrawal of residential permits to the heads of churches, the majority of whom are non-Gambians. “This can be a cause for alarm and people can start to ask questions why,” Bishop Bannie Manga, head of the council, told the parliamentary committee.

Gideon Adeoye, the Nigerian head of the Christ Apostolic Church in the Gambia, has built and runs two Christian secondary schools in the countryside. In 2014, two other schools were shut down by the education ministry for failing to teach Islamic education.

“Despite budgetary constraints, around September 2024, Islamic teachers just started showing up at Christian schools with appointment letters from the ministry,” Adeoye said. “So there is no more wiggle room for us to escape the policy. Their salary is paid by the government.”

Adeoye said that schools have focused on their Christian religious knowledge curriculum in response to the policy. “We study and teach the Bible more fervently so as to diligently equip our students for society and the world ahead,” he told me.

I asked Barry, a Muslim, about his views on the constitutional impasse. “I am not sure what the debate is about,” he said, “but there’s too much poverty in this country.”

When I finished my coffee, he smiled wide but waved away my worn banknote. “This one is on me,” he said.