Bamba Laye,
Thanks for your perspectives concerning what Gambia needs to do to move
from what seems to be an inherent part of our daily life since time
immemorial. To that I shall be adding a little bit from my own perspective.
In my opinion, one of our worst enemies is our attitude towards
development/achievement and its linkage with our culture of
dependence/inter-dependence. This, in my opinion, needs to be thoroughly
studied and people sensitized better as to its merits and demerits. I am of
the opinion that, unlike, say other West Africans such as the Senegalese,
Ghanaians, Malians, Guineans or Nigerians, Gambians are a rather laid-back
lot who would rather content with what they have than try anything else
new. This is manifest in the way we farm, the way we cook, the way we inter-
relate etc, etc. It is only in very rare occasions that you come across
even the semblance of change in our diets. Everybody seems to
cook "benachin, mbahal, chura, suppa" in almost exactly the same way and
using almost exactly the same ingredients. In other words, we are not
adventuroous and do not like change.
The same can be said of the way we build our houses, make household
furniture, sew clothes or even do business. Once Modou is doing well
importing jumbo, Alieu wants to import jumbo. Fatou designs "mbaseign",
Demba copies it. Kebba goes into real estate, Joe follows suit. We are not
very innovative! Just imagine, the number of people involved in the
importation and retail business. What does it take to start a metal
recycling plant? What does it take to make fruit juices from our own
produce? What does it take to organize people into co-operatives to prepare
and package cous-cous, cherreh, findi, salted peanuts, dried kanja etc,
etc? Isn't there market in the Diaspora for dried/freeze-
dried "ruye", "cherreh" just like the Ghanians do with "garri".
Most Gambian businessmen would rather do it alone than come together to go
into a venture that has the potential for better returns in areas that no
one else is involved in? But can you blame them? We are very good at eating
the goose that lays the golden egg rather than content with the golden eggs.
You made mention of a limited market; I do not think the market is that
limited. Most of what we we import could be produced right here with almost
all the raw materials coming from right here in The Gambia or within two
hour's flight from here. Our seaport and airport also opens up the entire
West African Market if not the whole of the African, European and American
markets.
Coming to Momodou Cisse's point of access to financing from outside the
country, he may be right that most people do not perhaps know much about
that. I however doubt that. My reason for saying so is based on a number of
workshops that I have attended in The Gambia, usually organized by
government in collaboration with the Gambia Chamber of Commerce and
Industry. At least speaking from that end, I have witnessed, on a number of
occasions, where our business people could not come up with projects that
interest such potential financiers because of the low scope of those
projects. Whereas these financiers want to look at projects requiring
support to the tune of several hundred thousand Dollars or even millions of
Dollars, we tend to require financing in the tens of thousand of Dollars.
In order words, we don't think very big!
Finally, let me say a little about the role of government in all this. Any
unbiased Gambian would readily agree that the government has done a lot in
recent years to facilitate the thriving of a private sector led economy.
Warehouse have been constructed, roads are being constructed, both sea and
airports improved significantly, legislation passed to facilitate
investment appraisal and approval/rejection, tax incentives, simple taxes,
some improvement in the generation and transmission of energy (though a lot
more still needs to be done), execellent communications throughout the
country and improving. Ok, on the side of rule of law and the rest, i do
not know much about that. Perhaps others more knowledgible in those areas
can say more about them.
Lest I forget, we also need to talk about the greed of some of our
businessmen and women. Last month, I was one of several people from
government, parastatals and the private sector, who attended a two-day
training programme organized by the Department of State for Trade, Industry
and Employment explaining what some of the WTO and ACP-EU partnership
agreements signed by government are all about. The idea was to enlighten
all stakeholders as to what we in Gambia can do to derive more benefit from
these agreements while abiding by our obligations. I was shocked to learn
that, someone who knew the actual cost of our imported rice, felt sorry for
our poor folks and ordered a whole ship load of it. Unfortunately, with
nowhere to offload the cargo, it was diverted to the other countries in the
subregion. It was alleged that some selfish business people who have
rented all the warehouses of the GPA would not allow the guy to use any of
them even though some where empty! It was further alleged that some
unscrupulous business people use this tactic to maintain a strangle-hold on
the importation of some of our basic commodities.
A lawyer, who's spent the best part of the pass ten years between India and
Pakistan, from where most of our rice comes from, told us that, he cannot
ever understand why 100% broken rice can be sold for anything more than
D100.00. He told us that our much priced Sadam rice is normally consumed by
the lowcast harijans of the Indian sub-continent. He told us that it was no
way possible for anyone to sell such rice for anything more than a few
cents a kilo. A senior customs official told us that import duty on rice is
ZERO per cent! Someone else also made a similar arguement about sugar. But
again, who do we blame? How many indegenous Gambians are involved in the
bulk importation of such commodities? We have a long way to go, if you ask
me.
These were just some thoughts I had about the issue at hand.
Have a good day, Gassa.
--
There is a time in the life of every problem when it is big enough to see,
yet small enough to solve (Mike Leavitt)
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