By Alieu Famara Sagnia
We share below from our archives an old news item from The Gambia Daily newspaper, whose contents I was reminded of by a recent piece authored by Ambassador Baks Touray and published by LamToro News:
The Gambia- Small is Beautiful – Think BIG – Believe In Gambia 🇬🇲.
From Individual Brilliance to National Transformation: A Roadmap to Middle-Income Gambia Within a Generation.
By Ambassador Abdoulie Baax Touray.
In recent years, the Old Man Musing series by His Excellency Hassan Gibril has performed a vital national service: it has documented, profiled, and celebrated the extraordinary achievements of Gambians who have excelled in diverse fields across the globe — from medicine, music science, sports, and academia to finance, diplomacy, and entrepreneurship. These stories are more than just tributes; they are powerful evidence of an undeniable truth: Gambians can and do compete — and lead — at the highest levels of global excellence.
Yet, this recognition of individual brilliance inevitably raises a deeper, more strategic question: How can we harness such extraordinary human potential to move The Gambia from a Least Developed Country (LDC) to a Middle-Income Country (MIC) within a single generation?
The answer lies not in isolated acts of brilliance, but in systematizing excellence, institutionalizing talent, and translating individual achievement into collective transformation.
Recognizing Human Capital as Our Greatest Asset
The first step is a mindset shift. The Gambia’s most valuable resource is not its land, rivers, or location — it is its people. The same ingenuity and resilience that enable Gambians to excel internationally must become the foundation of a new national development model. This means placing human capital — education, innovation, skills, and talent mobilisation — at the centre of economic policy.
Across the globe, Gambians are leading in medicine, academia, technology, creative industries, and global governance. The diaspora is more than a source of remittances — it is a reservoir of knowledge, capital, networks, and influence. Harnessing that potential requires moving beyond symbolic gestures to institutionalised partnerships.
Government and private sector actors should co-create mechanisms such as a National Talent Registry to map diaspora expertise, a “Gambia Excellence Council” to advise on key reforms, and targeted programmes to attract diaspora professionals into public service, universities, and enterprise development. Incentives — including dual-career pathways, investment facilitation, and knowledge transfer schemes — can make contributing to national development both meaningful and rewarding.
From Individual Achievement to Institutional Strength
One of the defining differences between countries that remain trapped in underdevelopment and those that leap forward is institutionalisation. Individual brilliance can inspire, but only strong institutions can sustain progress.
The Gambia must invest in building and reforming institutions that channel talent into impact: research centres that commercialise innovation, financial systems that support entrepreneurship, and regulatory bodies that encourage investment and fair competition. Equally crucial is reforming public service to reward merit, attract top talent, and deliver results.
A National Transformation Compact — a formal pact among key stakeholders — could define shared priorities, measurable targets, and mutual accountability. This compact would outline the roadmap for reform, encompassing macroeconomic stability, governance improvements, industrialization, digital transformation, infrastructure development, and investment in science, technology, and innovation.
Crucially, it must be underpinned by performance-driven governance — where ministries, state-owned enterprises, and development agencies operate under clear performance contracts and are held accountable for results.
Measuring Success: From Outputs to Outcomes
Ultimately, the measure of success will not be how many programmes we launch or policies we write, but how they translate into real outcomes: sustained GDP growth, a diversified export base, rising incomes, job creation, improved healthcare, and a robust middle class.
Middle-income status is not a label — it is a state of self-reliance, where The Gambia generates enough domestic revenue to fund its priorities, where young people aspire to innovate rather than emigrate, and where the country is a contributor — not merely a recipient — in the global economy.
Conclusion: A Call to Greatness
The stories chronicled in Old Man Musing remind us that Gambians are not defined by their limitations but by their possibilities. Our diaspora excels because they operate in systems that reward talent, enable innovation, and channel excellence into outcomes. If we replicate those conditions at home — through education reform, diaspora engagement, institutional strengthening, strategic sectoral development, and national consensus — there is no reason The Gambia cannot join the ranks of middle-income nations within a generation.
Individual brilliance must now become collective ambition. Personal success must evolve into national progress. And the extraordinary potential of Gambians — wherever they are — must fuel a shared project: building a prosperous, resilient, and self-reliant Gambia that future generations will be proud to inherit.
Respectfully Submitted
Ambassador Abdoulie M Touray
Founder/ President
SaHel Knowledge Campus Think Tank (SKCTT).
30 October, 2025
Source: LamToro News
