The Sanyang community is not opposing the planned Deep Sea Port, but its leaders say the Gambia Ports Authority is pushing the project without the documents, agreements, or genuine participation they were promised.
Dr. Sidi Sanyang, chairman of the community task force, said residents unanimously agreed to host the port after the July 2024 concession agreement between the GPA and Turkey’s Albayrak Group. The community even identified a large coastal tract in the Hawba area, toward Tujereng, for on-land facilities.
“There is no resistance to the Deep Sea Port project,” Sanyang said in a statement issued this month. Past dealings with government and private investors, however, produced “double whammy effects,” he said. That history led residents to form a task force and draft a Letter of Agreement meant to protect community land, beach access and fishing livelihoods while giving the investor and the GPA a clear framework.
The letter was to be finalized by senior counsel Lamin J. Darboe. Despite repeated requests at meetings with the Ministry of Transport, Works and Infrastructure and the GPA, the authority has never admitted the document, Sanyang said.
Instead, GPA Managing Director Ousman Jobarteh issued a surprise press statement on the port land lease. Task-force members later presented a counter-argument to the Ministry of Lands executive forum chaired by Minister Ahmat Bah. They received no formal reply.
In August 2026, three years after an initial courtesy call on Works Minister Ebrima Sillah, a consultant accompanied by GPA monitoring and evaluation officer Matarr Sambou began work on a Resettlement Action Plan. Sanyang called the exercise “a joke.” A credible plan, he argued, must rest on a master plan or project document shared with the community, an environmental impact assessment, social-safeguard studies, and the community’s own vision set out in the unsigned letter. None of those papers has been given to residents.
Meanwhile, the Physical Planning Department has begun issuing “stop development” and demolition notices along Sanyang beach. Decisions, Sanyang said, are made in Banjul and then announced at “pre-entry meetings.” That, he added, is “a wrong approach to sustainable development.”
The community also objects to being represented at GPA level by a monitoring officer rather than a member of executive management. “This is disrespectful to the people of Sanyang,” he said.
Sanyang accused the GPA, the Works Ministry and the West Coast Region governor’s office of working quietly with “an absolute minority” while sidelining the majority. He contrasted the current process with earlier Tourism Development Area exercises that preserved fish-landing sites in Bakau, Bijilo, Brufut and Tanje and, where land was taken, provided compensation.
“Sanyang is not opposed to development,” Sanyang said. “We are asking for a development process that respects our land, protects our livelihoods, and includes our community. Our land, our beach, our fish.”
