The premium GTBoard demands for the Strasser field would make the community a tenant on ground it already holds.
In October 2019, a Brufut taskforce held a press conference on the Strasser football field. By December 2020, Brufut’s youths and Village Development Committee (VDC) had almost finished fencing it. In 2021, at a rally in Jambur, President Adama Barrow handed the community papers for the same ground.
The Alkamba Times reported on 20 October that those papers have yet to become title, and that the Gambia Tourism Board (GTBoard) now demands a land premium above D200,000. The report says the VDC accepts that the field lies inside the Tourism Development Area (TDA) and sees payment of the premium as the remaining step.
I should declare my interest. I am a Brufut indigene and a member of the Manneh Kabilo. Brufut people at home and abroad contributed to the cost of fencing the field, and I was one of them. I am also the Founder and Research Lead of Securing Futures: Land Rights Action Collaborative (SFLRAC).
I use “Brufut” here as shorthand for the kabilolu who own its land; no single kabilo speaks for the community. My concern lies with the premise the VDC has accepted: that the field belongs to the TDA and the premium is owed. I hold nothing against the people carrying a process they did not design.
That premise assumes that the state owns the land. Brufut’s kabilolu owned it before the Colony, the Protectorate or the Republic existed, and the state has never shown how it acquired it. SFLRAC rejects the claim.
My Before the State series sets out the case, beginning with “What If the State Never Owned the Land?” The second essay, “How Does an Owner Become a Tenant?”, reads Legal Notice 2 of 1994, which designated Kombo North, Kombo South and Kombo Central as State land but recites no purchase, conquest, inheritance or consent.
The VDC’s position depends on the TDA, so the first question is what legal instrument created it. SFLRAC holds certified copies of the Coastal Belt Lease of 1970, P.14/1970 (Kombo South) and P.18/1970 (Kombo North), which the District Authorities granted to the minister responsible for Lands and Provinces. The leases make no mention of tourism, and SFLRAC knows of no instrument that turns them into the TDA.
Nor has the state produced one. In Gambia Tourism Board v Jeng (High Court, January 2026), a judgment now under appeal, the court treated the Board as proprietor of designated tourism areas yet found no instrument designating the TDA. The Minister of Tourism told a forum in July that the land belongs to the Government and not the Board: GTBoard demands a premium on land its own Minister assigns to the Government. The deeds he cited do not match the leases, as the second essay shows.
In August 2025 SFLRAC put the legal basis of the TDA lease to the Attorney General and Minister of Justice. He replied that he advises only the Government. SFLRAC wrote again on 1 September 2025 and has had no answer, and a meeting planned for my visit in March and April 2026 never took place. GTBoard should publish the deed it relies on before it asks Brufut for a premium.
Without that deed, the state has nothing to give, and a gift presumes a giver who owns what is given. In “What If the State Is Not Broken, but Built to Break Us?”, the first essay in my Architecture of Predation series, I argued that land presented as a presidential favour is indigenous land the state took.
At Jambur the state did the same with land that Brufut already owned and had fenced with its own labour and money. The ceremony staged a gift and withheld the title; the premium now asks Brufut to complete the performance by paying for it.
Mr Momodou Jallow, secretary general of the Brufut Multi-Purpose Centre and the VDC’s public relations officer, deserves a fair hearing. He told the Alkamba Times that a future government could reclaim the field unless the premium is settled, and he wants a document that outlasts any administration. The fear is reasonable; the remedy will fail him. Paying the premium treats GTBoard as the landlord and Brufut as its lessee, the status I traced in Before the State to a statute that deems owners into tenants. GTBoard would gain what its claim has always lacked: our written acknowledgement.
Brufut has seen what state designation costs. The late Abass Manneh, who headed the 2019 taskforce, set out the price. Brufut lost its eastern land to the Brusubi housing estate (under the State Lands Act 1991) and its western land to the Brufut Gardens project, and Brufut Heights was “sold to affluent people right under our nose”. Our fathers, he said, were told these lands were TDA or reserved land; they became private residences without adequate compensation.
Mr Jallow was secretary general of the Recovery Committee at the October 2019 press conference, which pledged to recover Brufut’s lands under public title for community use. In 2020, as the fencing neared completion, the VDC’s then chairman, Pa Lamin Fatty, told The Standard: “This is one project we will not compromise.” Brufut needs that resolve now more than it needs a receipt.
If the report is right, Brufut has already paid once for paper that did not become title. It says the community paid more than D12,000 to the Physical Planning Department for an institutional allocation lease, and that GTBoard then demanded a second, larger payment. It adds that a party official told the Jambur gathering that the premium was waived; no document followed. The report places the lease with the VDC. Brufut has a right to read it: its term, its rent, and whether it names the community as lessee or only records an allocation.
Payment would also weaken the community’s refusal to cede land. Once Brufut pays, GTBoard can claim a say over the boundaries, and the VDC’s rejection of the National Centre for Arts and Culture (NCAC) museum request loses force. The Pavifort hall, a D9.5 million building now going up on the site, raises the same risk: the community should see the full memorandum before concrete settles the question.
What should Brufut do? Withhold the premium and hold the field. The fence should stand, and no portion of the field, or of any other communal site, should pass to GTBoard, the NCAC or any contractor without the consent of Brufut’s kabilolu. Brufut should seek a title in the community’s name that records what it already holds, with no premium attached. Any letter claiming the ground should draw a written reply that demands the instrument behind it.
The VDC should publish every document it holds, so the community can read what Brufut has signed. A community that reads the state’s papers can test a demand before it pays.
This position carries no novelty. Abass Manneh held it on the field itself, and I have urged it on the community for years. Brufut should decline to pay for its own land.
I sent Mr Jallow this draft on 24 October and asked him about the lease and the premium. He had not answered when this went to press.
The essays cited here are in the SFLRAC archive at https://securing-futures.org/research
