Very thought provoking piece from the pages of The Gambia Journal
 
Letter To The Editor 

Gambian attitude towards work: The  Genesis of underdevelopment 
By Abdoulie Sallah 
Apr 11, 2007, 14:19 

Sometimes you tend to  wonder why a country so promising and full of 
potentials is failing the dynamics  of development. In most cases one is tempted to 
think that there are limited  resources to trigger socio-economic development. 
But then I tend to pose the  question what if the Gambia a small but great 
country was endowed with more  resources? Was this equation going to create more 
socio-economic opportunities  and advancement or was it going to be a 
catastrophic downturn? Conventional  wisdom will opine that if you cannot efficiently 
and effectively manage a  village, then how can you be expected to manage a 
city? The bottom-line argument  here is that if one’s attitude towards the 
management of small resources is  lackadaisical and dysfunctional, then how is it 
expected of one to manage bigger  resources?  A wiseman once stated that ‘a 
vision without an action is a  mere dream and an action without a vision is a waste
’ but I will rephrase this  and say that great skills, expertise and 
experience without appropriate  execution is a waste and a means to self-destruction. 
This been said, I am not  unmindful that the Gambia has produced and will 
continue to produce very  hardworking sons who will always remain a source of 
inspiration to future  generations.
A significant root to the development of underdevelopment in the  Gambia can 
be traced back to the attitude of most of its workforce. Have you  ever 
wondered why almost 60% of the employable population still remain  unemployed and 
why nearly 70% of the population are depending on 30% of the  population? Most 
people will tell me well the government of the day is not doing  enough. But 
then I will ask you who the government is? Does it not constitute  our fathers, 
mothers, sisters, brothers, cousins, friends and acquaintances? And  if this 
is the case then are we not part of the government? The point here is  that we 
must stop using the government as a scapegoat for everything that is  wrong 
and for the failings of our fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, friends  and 
ourselves. Malcolm X the great civil right activist once stated that ‘you  
cannot be blind with patriotism so much so that you cannot face reality, wrong  is 
wrong no matter who does it or says it’. Henceforth we as Gambians need to  
take a critical look at ourselves and re-evaluate our contributions towards the  
dynamics of underdevelopment in our great and noble motherland and the first 
and  foremost thing we need to take a hard look at is the attitude of the 
workforce.  The attitude we have towards work will determine how successful we 
become as a  nation because even if we have everything by our side and don’t 
possess the  right attitude we will still fail. Even the expectation of a divine 
intervention  will not help without the right attitude because over and over 
again we do hear  the adage ‘God only help those who help themselves’ and God 
Himself has  mentioned in the Qu’ran that He will not change the condition of a 
nation  (people) until they change it for themselves or make an effort to 
change it.  
It is now time to call a spade a spade. Although there are pockets of  
individuals who are very hardworking, honest, disciplined and sincere, however I  
will not hesitate to say that most officials and ordinary people are very lazy,  
dishonest, undisciplined, and greedy and lack dignity and integrity. They 
have  no concept of direction and advancement and are thus sent wallowing into 
the  ocean of opportunism by the winds of materialism. Have you ever taking time 
to  visit offices during working hours in the civil service, government 
departments  and para-statals? You will be surprise at what you see or may be not 
because you  may have been groomed by this system. Whilst you may find a very 
sizeable amount  of hardworking people stick to their desks proving very 
productive, the majority  are usually found wondering in Alice’s land. What do I see 
upon visiting  offices? Well I see people sleeping in their offices when they 
should be  working; I see people forming their own chitchat forums mainly 
full of gossips,  slandering and backbiting; I see people using what belongs to 
the offices for  their own personal gains; I see people playing music and 
dancing; I see people  trying to make love in the office; I see people signing in 
and in a matter of  seconds signing out for the rest of the day; I see people 
been abuse even though  they are the righteous ones; I see people who have no 
responsibilities other  than going from office door to office door just lying 
and seeking favours; I see  people who cannot even spell their names occupying 
positions of responsibilities  and authority because they are the wives, 
daughters, sons, brothers and sisters  of the ‘big’ people; I see people with no 
job roles; I see people abusing the  trust and confidence of the Gambian 
people; I see people who make themselves so  inaccessible to other people even 
though they are there to serve the needs of  those people; I see people who condemn 
injustice during the day and condone it  during the night; and I see much 
more.
Has is ever happened to you when you  were the most qualified person for the 
job but because you have no contacts or  coming from a poor family background, 
you lost the job? Has it ever happened to  you when you were due for 
promotion due hard work and merit but because someone  is affiliated with a party or 
an individual, they get the promotion? Have you  ever been dismissed for 
telling the truth? Have you ever worked in an office  where it is a taboo to 
challenge decisions, be rationale about ideas and be  truthful about reality? Have 
you ever been isolated, discriminated and harassed  because you work hard, 
because you are disciplined, because you are sincere,  because you are honest and 
because you want to see justice and transparency?  Have you ever been 
blacklisted, defamed or caricatured because you try to be  creative and innovative 
about you job?
Today the culture of the workforce in  the Gambia is castrating development 
and causing an impotence to progress.  Nowadays you will have to know somebody 
or have a contact to get the job done or  have a transaction successfully 
completed. There is a lack of professional code  of conduct and even if there is 
any, then people override it and use it to their  own advantage- that is 
getting favours from each other. One day whilst in the  Gambia having a discussion 
with a friend of mine, he related a very sad story  about a woman. This poor 
woman from the province area (around Central River  Region) sadly lost her 
husband who had served the Gambia all throughout his  life. All she needed was the 
pension of her husband to maintain the family. She  came all the way to Banjul 
for this simple transaction, which probably should  not have taken even a 
week. Unfortunately for her she was referred to different  departments before 
been finally redirected to the department she started from.  Her case was dragged 
for over three months and as if this was not enough it was  not still 
resolved. It was a friend of the woman who new my friend that asked my  friend to 
help the woman even though my friend was in a totally separate  department. He 
knew somebody in the other department and asked that individual  to help the 
poor woman’s case and afterwards it took less than a week for the  woman to get 
what was entitled to her.  Why should this be the norm? Why  does she have to 
suffer before claiming what was entitled to her? Why should it  take longer 
than usual to resolve her case? Why should it be a favour for her  case to be 
sorted? What would have been her fate if no one tried to help her?  And just how 
long would it have taken after the three months to get her case  sorted out 
without any form of intervention?   
This situation  reflects an undesired metamorphosis of socio-economic 
development supported by  the pillars of venomous social reassurances. In a very 
intensely competitive  world, gone are the days when you will sit and just do what 
you have been asked  to do without involving any form of innovation and 
creativity and going that  extra mile to explore other avenues in order to create 
more opportunities. Time  and again I do hear management gurus saying that a 
good worker creates more work  in an efficient and effective way. However, if 
this is to be applied to the  Gambia, then we are thousands of miles away from 
having good workers because the  minority of good   workers in the Gambia today 
have been heavily  overshadowed by the bad workers and there efforts 
neutralised, thus making it  very difficult to distinguish the good from the bad and 
the bad from the ugly.  Our attitude towards work should not be about sitting 
down and waiting to be  told what to do and when to do it, instead it should be 
one that is proactive;  one that is target driven and success oriented; it 
should be one that is  action-oriented and disciplined.

The way forward
I have always told  people and my students that whenever you criticise 
people, systems or  ideologies, don’t leave them hanging like that because it will 
cause you to be a  victim of the very thing you criticise, thus offer 
constructive alternatives.  This is exactly what I intend to do in this section. It 
will be very unwise of  me to claim that my solution or alternative is universal 
and that it is the only  solution. In fact what I am about to offer is not a 
means to an end nor is it a  beginning to an end. All it will do will be to 
create a beginning to the  magnetisation of other ideas and thoughts for a way 
forward.
Undoubtedly  change will be the foremost thing to be put into the equation 
and not only  change but a change that is swift and radical. First of all, a 
needs analysis  needs to be conducted in every department, para-statal, and also 
in the civil  service, using the matrix analysis framework. It so happens that 
most offices  and departments are overloaded with people who needn’t be 
there, thus causing a  limbo in operations particularly cost. Most people in 
organisations, departments  and offices don’t even have a job description and don’t 
play any roles within  their organisations or departments. Conducting needs 
analysis will enable  organisations and departments to identify their 
resources, and the quality and  quantity of the personnel they would need to operate. 
People only become idle  and lazy when they have absolutely nothing to do or 
think about. People should  have enough work to keep them busy for the required 
number of hours they are  expected to stay in their offices and not having to 
stay in their offices for  eight hours just to be given a ten minute piece of 
work for the whole day. The  needs analysis will also weed out the unwanted 
people thereby saving cost for  the departments and organisations. Although this 
may be seen as harsh and a  repetition of the retrenchment of workers as in 
the days of the Economic  Recovery Programme, however the difference is that 
cost saved will be reinvested  into the best, most qualified and hardworking 
workers instead of repaying debts.  In addition, this will create a very 
competitive atmosphere where people will  learn to value their jobs and always want to 
make a difference in the workplace.  Similarly, conventional wisdom on 
motivation will reveal that the better the  people are paid, developed and given the 
right resources, the more likely they  will excel and bring about desired 
results.
In addition, another mechanism  that can be used to overcome the Gambian 
attitude or work culture is the  introduction of systems that will monitor and 
hold accountable each and every  individual within organisations and departments. 
Here I am not talking about the  ‘police organisation’ or the ‘CCTV’ 
organisation where freedom to be innovative  or creative is restraint and where 
people’s privacy is invaded under the pretext  of organisational policies and 
procedures. Rather I am referring to systems that  will lay solid foundations for 
work ethic and professionalism, thus allowing  people to work professionally 
but also be held responsible for their actions. I  am not also talking about 
systems that will condone the blame culture or  bureaucracy, but systems that 
will promote transparency, efficiency and  effectiveness. I am talking about 
systems that will ensure that even the  organisation or department driver or 
cleaner knows the strategic objectives of  the organisation/department and know 
how their roles contribute to the overall  attainment of the strategic goals. It 
is sad to note that even most middle level  managers in the Gambia know 
neither the mission nor the objectives of their  respective organisations. How then 
does one expect them to perform meaningfully  towards the achievement of such 
objectives? What has happened to performance  management? What has happened 
to employee development review? What has happened  to employee supervision? 
What has happened to employee mentoring? What has  happened to appraisal? How 
many of these systems are fully and regularly  utilised? Well if people don’t 
have the technical know-how, how can they be  expected to do it? This leads me to 
my next point.
Capacity building or  development always proves to be very valuable. 
Developing the expertise and  technical know-how of your employees is an investment 
worthwhile both in the  short and long runs. Unfortunately in the Gambia this 
valuable area of  investment is abused and totally alienated. It is the norm and 
practice in  Gambian departments and organisations that capacity building and 
development is  used as a mechanism for seeking and returning favours. People 
are nowadays sent  to trainings, workshops, seminars, conferences, and 
further studies not because  they are the most suitable and qualified individuals, 
but because they simply  lick the backside of the ‘boss’. This has created a 
phenomenon where the ‘boss’  becomes the hungry predator searching for its 
preys in the vast ocean of  opportunism, eventually turning the employees into 
opportunistic preys. Thus you  will have to do everything the boss says or else 
you be held in solitary  confinement where you will never see the beaming rays 
of training and  development. Another criteria for eligibility that is 
usually considered when it  comes to training and development is personal 
affiliation with the ‘big boss’ or  the ‘bigger boss’. Sometimes the boss, the big 
boss and the bigger boss are so  greedy that they let nothing leak down to the 
underdogs, even though they may  not need it but because of the allowances and 
par-diems attached.  Recommendations for further training and development must 
be critically assessed  and attached to the needs of the organisation or 
department. Robust selection  criteria that are open and transparent must be put in 
place allowing little or  no space for managerial discretion. May be having a 
selection committee  comprising of sections of the organisation or department 
will not be a bad idea.  The purpose of this committee will be to scrutinise 
proposals coming from senior  management with reference to training and 
development and scan selected  individuals against set criteria. This is neither 
bureaucracy nor work  overloading, it is simply accountability.
Finally, a new approach towards  public management must be introduced; one 
that is independent and free from  politicisation; one that is very competitive 
and customer oriented; one that  involves consultation with the very people 
whose needs need to be served; one  that is target driven; and one that is 
accountable to all stakeholders. I do not  mean privatisation here but something 
like a competitive and non-commodified  alternative to capitalist corporations 
who are target driven and profit  oriented. The delivery of public services 
must be measured, planned, evaluated  and above all accounted for. I am not 
saying that it is wrong to do favours for  people, but it must not be the 
foundation for professionalism and certainly not  the corner stone for the delivery of 
public services.
The Gambia is a small  and peaceful country that has social values. Social 
systems are good for  development and as a result must be valued and treasured. 
I am saying we must  learn to help each other; I am saying we must learn to 
lend a hand; I am saying  we must learn to support each other; I am saying we 
must change our attitude  towards work if we are to reach the pinnacle of 
advancement; I am saying we must  not base our decisions and work ethics on social 
delusions but rather on  informed rationality guided by a sense of social  
justice.     

By 
Abdoulie Sallah
PhD  Student
University of Leicester School of Management (UK)  
 



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