By Yusef Taylor, @FlexDan_YT
The European Union (EU) Ambassador to the Gambia announced that President Adama Barrow’s Government has benefitted D22 Billion in financial support during his first term. Addressing the press at Ocean Bay Hotel in Cape Point, EU Ambassador Corrado Pampaloni revealed that “over the period 2017-2021 the European Union supported The Gambia to the tune of €365 million Euro (about D22 billion Dalasi), among the highest per capita in Africa”.
The Gambia’s relationship with the EU was tense due to the poor human rights record of the previous government of President Yahya Jammeh. Towards the end of Jammeh’s 22-year rule, the relationship declined steeply. However, his successor President Adama Barrow has been on good terms with the EU. The EU has been pumping billions to the Gambia since President Barrow defeated Jammeh in the December 2016 election.
During his speech, Ambassador Pampaloni explained that since “the change of regime in The Gambia in 2017, the EU-Gambia relationship has been fundamentally transformed. From the outset, the EU affirmed its support to the democratic transition in The Gambia and to the realisation of the Gambian National Development Plan”.
It can be recalled that one of President Barrow’s first initiatives was the EU powered €11 million Euro (about D655 million Dalasi) Tekki Fii project, which is still ongoing. Gainako has been publishing EU’s press releases on budget support provided to The Gambia. One of the key points underlined by the EU Leadership in the Gambia is the fact that their budget support is 100% grant and not a loan. This means that the Gambia will not need to repay the monies spent.
Reviewing the EU’s Budget Support press releases published on Gainako, it can be seen that the most recent publication was in May 2021 when the EU announced “the release of €5.55 million Euro (about D338 million Dalasi) for the budget of The Gambia”. In another publication issued in October 2020, the EU announced that it had gifted the Gambia “€25 million Euro (about D1.5 billion Dalasi) of budget support for The Gambia’s response to the coronavirus pandemic”.
In May of 2020, the EU kept pumping millions of Euros to the Gambia. Two press releases were issued announcing EU budgetary support to The Gambia in the same month of May. One of the grants was “D73 million Dalasi (about €1.35 million Euro) to fund a long-term technical assistance team to work in support of the National Environment Agency and Department of Water Resources in mitigating the consequences of climate change and helping The Gambia to adapt to it”.
Only days before the aforementioned presser the EU declared that it was “reinforcing its Technical Assistance to The Gambia, with an additional financial support of €550 thousand Euro (about D30 million Dalasi)”.
Just one month earlier [April 2020] the EU announced its first budget support to fuel The Gambia’s fight against the Covid 19 Pandemic. This time their statement noted that the EU was giving “about D512.6 million Dalasi (Є9 million Euro) in support to The Gambia efforts to tackle the Covid-19 crisis”.
The earliest Gainako publication on EU’s budget support to The Gambia was in December 2019 when the EU reported that it had “transferred a tranche of €22 million Euro (about D1.3 billion Dalasi) to the National Treasury of The Gambia, as per the State and Resilience Building Contract agreed between the EU and the Government of The Gambia”.
In that same press release the EU also revealed that “since EU and The Gambia intensified their relations in 2017, the European Union has so far transferred a total of €77 million euro (about 4.6 billion Dalasi) in grant financial assistance to The Gambia to support reforms to improve its governance, public financial management and service delivery in the country”.
If the EU’s most recent announcement that it actually invested D22 billion in The Gambia within a period of 5 years is true, then the EU invested D4.4 billion a year in the Gambian Economy during President Adama Barrow’s first five-year term. The Gambia’s total Approved Appropriation in 2020 was D21.28 billion Dalasi. Since the EU’s announcement of this significant amount of funds invested in the Gambia, many have been left wondering where all the money has gone to.
According to EU Ambassador Pampaloni EU’s support has resulted in “the setting up and operation of the National Human Rights Commission, the Constitutional Review Commission and the TRRC, as well as many other interventions in the area of governance and reforms”.
Looking forward to continuing the relationship, Ambassador Pampaloni says they “will work very closely with the Government around the follow-up to the TRRC report and the White Paper that we expect will be issued very soon”.
Gainako published this exclusive report on EU funding to the Gambia after an interview with previous EU Ambassador Atila Lajos.