Marriage is one of the most important institutions in any society because what happens within families eventually affects the entire nation. When families are financially stable, children are more likely to be fed, clothed, sheltered, educated, and given access to health care. When adults repeatedly create households they cannot financially sustain, however, the consequences do not remain behind closed doors. They eventually appear as hunger, interrupted education, child labor, early marriage, homelessness, dependence on extended families, poor health outcomes, and psychological distress. This is why I believe the Government of The Gambia should seriously consider requiring financial examinations and greater accountability before a married man takes an additional wife. This is not about attacking Islam or denying religious freedom. It is about asking a question that we have avoided for too long: if a man wants to exercise the Islamic permission to marry up to four wives, is he financially capable of accepting the responsibilities that come with that choice?
The socioeconomic situation in The Gambia makes this conversation urgent. The World Bank reported in 2026 that extreme poverty remained at approximately 20.3%, while about 81% of workers were employed in the informal sector. It also reported that 41.3% of Gambian young people between ages 15 and 34 were neither employed, in education, nor in training. Women’s labor-force participation was approximately 41.9%, compared with 54.9% for men, and women’s average hourly earnings were lower than men’s (World Bank, 2026). Using a broader poverty measure, the World Food Programme reports that approximately 53% of Gambians live in poverty, 29% of the population is food insecure, and 24% of households have inadequate food consumption (World Food Programme [WFP], n.d.). These figures should force us to examine not only government economic policy but also household financial responsibility.
Children are carrying part of this burden. UNICEF reports that approximately 27.4% of Gambian children are involved in child labor and nearly 20% of school-age children are completely out of school. UNICEF also reports that only 65.5% of children complete primary school, 45.8% reach lower-secondary education, and only 29.2% reach upper-secondary education. Furthermore, approximately 34.2% of young Gambian women were married before age 18 (UNICEF Gambia, n.d.). These are not simply statistics. These numbers represent Gambian children whose futures are being shaped today. A school-age child should not be selling goods in the streets during school hours because the adults responsible for that child cannot provide food. Children should not become substitute breadwinners because their fathers continue expanding families they cannot financially maintain. The Gambia should strengthen and enforce laws against child labor that interferes with education and ensure that school-age children are where they belong during school hours: in school.
We also need to be intellectually and religiously honest about polygamy. Islam permits a Muslim man to marry up to four wives under conditions; it does not command every Muslim man to practice polygamy. The Qur’an states in Surah An-Nisa 4:3 that men may marry women of their choice, “two, three, or four,” but immediately qualifies that permission by stating that if they fear they cannot maintain justice, then they should marry only one (Qur’an 4:3). The verse therefore cannot responsibly be reduced to “Islam says I can have four wives.” The condition of justice exists within the same verse as the permission. Contemporary Muslim scholar Amina Wadud (1999) has emphasized the importance of understanding this passage within its ethical and historical context, particularly its concern with justice, women, orphans, and vulnerable members of society. Polygamy is a permission, not a religious obligation.
The Qur’an also connects family responsibility to financial provision. Surah An-Nisa 4:34 refers to men spending from their wealth in support of their families (Qur’an 4:34). Surah An-Nisa 4:129 further warns about the difficulty of maintaining complete equality between wives and cautions men against inclining entirely toward one wife while leaving another suspended. Therefore, if we are going to discuss a man’s Islamic right to marry up to four wives, we must also discuss justice, maintenance, responsibility, and the rights of the women and children affected by his decisions. We cannot cherry-pick the part of religion that gives permission while ignoring the accountability attached to that permission.
Consider the hypothetical example of Modou and Fatou, a situation that many Gambians may recognize in different forms. Modou and Fatou are married and have four children. They still live in Modou’s parents’ family compound because they cannot afford independent housing. Their income is unstable. When the children need school fees or supplies, they ask relatives for help. When food becomes scarce, someone in the extended family sends money. When the children need clothing, relatives contribute. When somebody becomes sick, they again depend on family members. Both Modou and Fatou regularly ask relatives for assistance just to meet their family’s basic needs.
Then one day, Modou decides to marry a second wife without Fatou’s agreement. When people question how he can afford another marriage when he is already struggling to support his wife and four children, Modou responds, “It is my right in Islam. A Muslim man can marry up to four wives.”
Now let us examine that scenario beyond the wedding ceremony.
Who is currently feeding Modou’s children? Who is paying their school expenses? Who purchases their clothes? Who pays their medical expenses? Who provides the roof over their heads? If Modou cannot independently maintain one household without depending repeatedly on his parents, siblings, relatives, friends, or family members abroad, what financial evidence demonstrates that he can responsibly establish another household?
Now suppose Modou’s second wife begins having children. In many African communities, women continue to experience social pressure surrounding fertility and motherhood after marriage. Research examining fertility in The Gambia has identified relationships between women’s status, education, household wealth, age at marriage, desired family size, marital arrangements, and fertility outcomes (Palamuleni, 2019). Modou may therefore move from supporting one wife and four children to two wives and five, six, seven, or more children. His income, however, does not automatically multiply because the number of wives and children has multiplied.
Someone eventually absorbs that financial deficit. Too often, it is the women, the children, grandparents, siblings, relatives abroad, or the broader community. That is where a supposedly “private” marital decision becomes a socioeconomic issue. A man’s decision may be private, but hungry children are a public concern. Children outside school are a public concern. Child labor is a public concern. Homelessness is a public concern. Women’s economic vulnerability is a public concern. Poor access to health care is a public concern. Mental-health distress is a public concern. Poverty is a national concern.
We cannot continuously tell African women to become financially independent while simultaneously allowing financially irresponsible men to create additional households without accountability. A woman should not be struggling to find rice for her children while her husband is asking relatives for money to finance another marriage. His sister living abroad should not become the unofficial provider for children she did not create because their father continues creating additional financial responsibilities. Grandparents should not have to repeatedly pay school fees, food, clothing, medical expenses, rent, naming ceremonies, and transportation while the father insists that acquiring another wife is exclusively his private religious right. Rights and responsibilities cannot be separated.
Research from The Gambia also demonstrates why women’s wellbeing must be part of this discussion. Lowe, Chen, and Huang (2016), examining maternal health in rural Gambia, identified household gender relations and polygamy among the social and cultural factors affecting women’s health. Their work discussed psychological, familial, and economic challenges associated with women’s experiences within some polygamous households. This does not mean every polygamous marriage produces poverty or psychological distress. There are financially stable and functional polygamous families. The issue is whether men who are already financially incapable of maintaining their existing families should be permitted to repeatedly expand those families without any meaningful examination of the consequences for women and children.
Financial instability is also a mental-health issue. Imagine Fatou already worrying every month about food, school expenses, clothing, transportation, housing, and medical care for four children. Now imagine watching the already inadequate household resources being divided between another wife and potentially another set of children. Imagine carrying the psychological responsibility for keeping the original household functioning while simultaneously being told that questioning the arrangement means questioning religion. Chronic financial insecurity, family conflict, marital instability, and caregiving burdens can contribute to psychological distress. If The Gambia is serious about improving women’s and children’s mental health, we cannot continuously address symptoms while refusing to discuss socioeconomic and family structures that may contribute to those symptoms.
This is why I am proposing that The Gambia seriously explore a Family Responsibility and Marriage Accountability framework. Before an already-married man contracts another marriage, he should be required to demonstrate his financial capacity through an appropriate family or Cadi court process. This could include verified income, employment or business earnings, bank or mobile-money records where appropriate, assets, debts, existing dependents, housing arrangements, current household expenses, school expenses, medical obligations, existing maintenance responsibilities, and evidence that his current wife and children have adequate food, clothing, shelter, education, and access to health care. Because much of The Gambia’s economy is informal, financial scrutiny should not depend exclusively on formal employment or payslips. Courts could develop culturally appropriate ways of establishing genuine financial capacity for farmers, traders, business owners, skilled workers, informal workers, and others.
Before Wife Number Two, Three, or Four, there should be one basic question: are the wife and children you already have adequately provided for?
If the answer is no, why should society ignore that reality simply because another marriage is religiously permissible? Religious permission should not become protection from financial accountability.
Family and Cadi courts should also have stronger mechanisms for enforcing child maintenance and other legally recognized family financial obligations. A father should not be able to create multiple households, father numerous children, divorce one woman, move to another relationship, and leave women, grandparents, relatives, charities, and the government responsible for the consequences. Divorce should never become an escape route from parental financial responsibility. Regardless of what happens between husband and wife, his responsibility toward the children he helped create continues.
Every marriage should also be formally documented. Marriage should no longer be something that can remain hidden until another woman suddenly discovers that her husband has contracted another marriage. Proper registration can help establish marital status, the number of existing marriages, parental relationships, inheritance rights, maintenance obligations, and divorce records. Documentation protects women and children, but it also protects responsible men by creating reliable legal evidence of family relationships and obligations. If The Gambia wants stronger families, the government cannot wait until women and children become homeless, abandoned, or destitute before asking questions.
Premarital counseling should also become an important part of marriage preparation. Couples should discuss finances, debt, employment, housing, children, reproductive expectations, communication, conflict resolution, mental health, domestic violence, parenting, property, divorce, religious expectations, and, where relevant, polygamy before marriage. Young women should know what rights and responsibilities accompany marriage, and young men should understand that marriage is not merely acquiring a wife. It is accepting responsibility for another human being and potentially for children whose wellbeing will depend heavily on the decisions of their parents.
We must also stop confusing accountability with an attack on African men. Holding men financially accountable honors responsible fatherhood. The Gambian man who works, provides for his children, educates them, maintains his household, respects his family, and accepts responsibility for the children he creates should not be placed in the same category as a man who repeatedly creates households he cannot feed. Responsible men should have nothing to fear from financial accountability.
The Government of The Gambia, National Assembly members, Cadi courts, Islamic scholars, women’s organizations, children’s advocates, African economists, psychologists, social workers, educators, lawyers, and community leaders should collectively examine this issue. We need policies developed within Gambian realities rather than simply importing foreign family models. African scholars, religious leaders, women, and communities must be part of developing solutions that protect both religious freedom and human welfare.
How can Africa develop if we refuse to hold Africans accountable? How can The Gambia reduce poverty while refusing to examine financially unsustainable family structures? How can we fight child labor without asking why children are working? How can we fight hunger without examining who is responsible for feeding the household? How can we promote girls’ education without addressing early marriage and economic dependency? How can we advocate for women’s mental health while refusing to discuss chronic financial and marital stress? And how long can we expect relatives and Gambians in the diaspora to rescue households while refusing to question adults who knowingly create responsibilities they cannot financially sustain?
This is bigger than polygamy. It is about responsible marriage, responsible fatherhood, responsible motherhood, responsible government, and responsible nation-building. Poverty is not merely a mindset. Poverty can become intergenerational. It is a household problem, a structural problem, a socioeconomic problem, and ultimately a national-development problem.
The Gambia can respect Islam while demanding accountability. These ideas are not mutually exclusive. If a man chooses to exercise the Islamic permission to marry up to four wives, then justice, financial maintenance, housing, food, clothing, health care, education, and the wellbeing of every woman and child affected by that decision must also become part of the conversation. We cannot quote “two, three, or four” and stop there. The same Qur’anic verse warns that if justice cannot be maintained, then one should marry only one (Qur’an 4:3).
So before Wife Number Two, let us examine Responsibility Number One.
Before another wedding, let us ask whether the children already here are eating.
Are they clothed?
Are they safely housed?
Are they attending school?
Can their father afford their medical care?
Is their mother struggling to provide basic necessities while their father is borrowing money for another marriage?
If Modou must call his sister, brother, cousin, friend, or relative abroad to feed Fatou and their four children today, perhaps the question is not whether Islam permits him another wife. The question is whether Modou is presently capable of carrying the enormous responsibility attached to another family.
Permission does not eliminate responsibility.
Religious rights should not eliminate accountability.
And the burden of financially irresponsible decisions should not continually fall upon African women and children.
The future of The Gambia begins inside its families. If we truly want a healthier, educated, economically productive, and mentally stronger generation of Gambians, then government, communities, religious institutions, women, and men must be willing to have difficult conversations about how families are formed and sustained.
We cannot wait until another generation of women and children is struggling before acting.
The conversation needs to begin now.
By:
Dr. Mimi Fatou Ceesay
Journalist / Psychologist
Marriage and Family Therapist
References:
Lowe, M., Chen, D.-R., & Huang, S.-L. (2016). Social and cultural factors affecting maternal health in rural Gambia: An exploratory qualitative study. PLOS ONE, 11(9), e0163653.
Palamuleni, M. E. (2019). Women status and fertility in The Gambia. Gender & Behaviour.
The Qur’an. Surah An-Nisa 4:3, 4:34, 4:129.
UNICEF Gambia. (n.d.). Protection and inclusion of children. UNICEF.
Wadud, A. (1999). Qur’an and woman: Rereading the sacred text from a woman’s perspective (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press.
World Bank. (2026). Charting a path to stronger growth, fiscal resilience, and women’s economic participation in The Gambia. World Bank.
World Food Programme. (n.d.). Gambia. World Food Programme.
World Health Organization Regional Office for Africa. (2026). The Gambia: Country health profile. World Health Organization.
