By Dr Ismaila Badjie
Illegal migration is a multi-million-dalasi underground economy in The Gambia, with tentacles stretching across communities, borders, and social classes. What appears as desperation on the surface is, beneath it, an organised industry driven by profit, secrecy, and silence. Only an undercover, top-tier investigative journalist could fully unravel the networks, routes, financiers, enablers, and beneficiaries.
A single boat carrying about 280 people costs a minimum of D20 million dalasi to organise. The agents and their partners operate with chilling indifference, caring little about what becomes of those lives once the boat disappears into the Atlantic. Imagine 100 boats a month, that is D2 billion dalasi flowing through a shadow economy, untaxed, unregulated, and soaked in human suffering. This is not migration; it is human trafficking disguised as hope.
The year 2026 was greeted with sadness across the country, as news broke of yet another tragic loss of migrants who decided that it was better to die in the Mediterranean Sea than to remain in The Gambia, Bissau, Conakry, Mali, or Casamance. According to international migration monitoring bodies, West African routes remain among the deadliest, with thousands reported missing or dead in the Atlantic and Mediterranean every year, many never identified, never buried, never mourned properly.
The Gambia, once celebrated globally for its hospitality, peace, and tourism – is increasingly appearing in mainstream international media for the wrong reasons: boat departures, missing youths, grieving mothers, and shattered communities. One must ask: why risk your life for Europe when estimates suggest that fewer than one in four irregular migrants successfully reach their destination alive and mentally intact, and many who arrive face detention, exploitation, deportation, or years of undocumented hardship?
Scholars, social commentators, politicians, activists, and NGOs have all weighed in—often from different perspectives shaped by ideology, funding priorities, political alignment, or personal belief. Yet the bottom line remains stark: lives are being lost, irregular migrants are not relenting, agents are getting richer, while the political class debates whether the root cause is government failure, unemployment, rising living costs, lack of opportunity, or lost hope. Meanwhile, dead bodies keep arriving, or worse, never arrive at all.
The real question is: what should we do as a people and as a society?
- The Government’s responsibility
The Government has a duty to ensure that illegal migration does not occur through our territorial waters by activating: - a) 24/7 naval patrols, supported by intelligence-led surveillance, and the arrest and prosecution of all actors involved, from recruiters to financiers, not just the foot soldiers.
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b) Community policing structures, especially in coastal and high-risk departure zones, where residents are empowered to report suspicious movements without fear of reprisals.
c) Job creation through foreign direct investment (FDI) while deliberately improving electricity reliability, internet affordability, and national security, which are consistently cited by investors as barriers. - d) Heavy investment in youth development, sports, arts, and community programmes, because idle hands are easily recruited by despair.
- e) Incentives and legal protection for whistle-blowers, recognising that information is the most powerful weapon against clandestine operations
- Parents and families
Families of would-be migrants have a serious role to play. It is no longer unusual to hear of family land being sold to bankroll a dangerous journey. Why knowingly send a loved one into harm’s way? If the D60,000–D150,000 often raised for a journey were invested into a small business, farming, trade, or skills training, within one or two years a legitimate travel pathway, such as a visitor or student visa, may become possible. Death is irreversible; patience is not.
- Religion and belief
We are a deeply religious country. But we must stop hiding behind predestination to explain preventable deaths. If everything were already decreed, why go to work, farm, or send children to school? Even religious scripture reminds us: “Tie your camel, then trust in God.” Human beings were given intellect and choice; let us not attribute recklessness and exploitation to divine will.
- IOM and activists
Organisations like IOM and civil society groups must be supported with sustained funding, ensuring that hotspot communities, coastal villages, border towns, and transit areas are proactively targeted with education, counselling, and livelihood alternatives. We must stop reacting only after tragedy strikes. One death is already too many.
- Community responsibility
Communities must refuse to look away. Just as we would not allow harmful influences into our homes to corrupt our children, we must not tolerate illegal migration networks operating in our neighbourhoods. Silence enables crime; vigilance saves lives.
- Legislation and economic ownership
From Banjul to Brikama, it is evident that many businesses are foreign-controlled. While legitimate foreign investment is welcome, the nation must deliberately define sectors reserved for 100% Gambian ownership, those requiring 25% or 50% local participation, and those fully open to foreign control. This is not xenophobia; it is economic self-preservation and youth employment strategy.
- Strengthening the National Youth Service Scheme
All students completing Grade 12 or tertiary education should undertake a mandatory one-year national service, allowing skills development, civic responsibility, and workplace exposure. Public institutions and private companies should also be legally required to host a minimum number of interns annually. Hope grows when opportunity is visible.
- TVET and skills for purpose
Technical and Vocational Education and Training must be intensified, modernised, and aligned with labour market needs. Training without absorption is failure by design. Graduates must be deliberately linked to agriculture, construction, energy, ICT, manufacturing, and creative industries.
As a country, blaming one another will not save lives. Migration is as old as humanity itself, but the scale, recklessness, and cruelty of the current trend are alarming. Today, even one-month-old babies are being taken on these journeys, exposed to hunger, dehydration, abuse, and death in the worst imaginable conditions.
I call on the Government, through the Ministry of Youth, the Ministry of Local Government, and the Ministry of Religious Affairs, to urgently convene all key stakeholders and develop a coordinated, time-bound national action plan. The time is now. History will not be kind to us if we choose indifference over courage and delay over life.
