Powered by IFAD

Rural poverty approaches, policies & strategies in the Gambia

Since the mid-1980s, The Gambia has implemented economic policies favouring macroeconomic stability, market liberalization and private-sector development. In 1998, the Government adopted a long-term strategy, The Gambia Incorporated Vision 2020, a blueprint for accelerated and sustainable development, which aims to transform the nation into a middle-income country by the next decade. The Gambia’s key framework for poverty reduction and food security is outlined in the Second Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP II) for the period 2007-2011. The PRSP II builds on the development objectives of attaining the MDGs and Vision 2020, and defines the overall government strategy for achieving growth, sustainable development and poverty reduction. It recognizes that poverty reduction in rural areas requires significant investment in three priority sectors: agriculture, health and education.

The Agricultural and Natural Resources Policy (ANRP) 2007-2015 was formulated as part of the Government’s continued commitment to agriculture. The policy aims to transform agriculture into a robust, market-oriented sector making an important contribution to sustainable poverty reduction and economic growth in the country. The four strategic objectives that ANRP expects to achieve by 2015 are:

• Improved and sustainable levels of food and nutrition security throughout the country, particularly among vulnerable populations
• A commercialized agriculture sector, ensuring competitive, efficient and sustainable food and agricultural value chains and market linkages
• Stronger public and private institutions, providing services and helping reduce vulnerability in food and nutrition security
• Sustainable and effective management of natural resources

In mid-2009, the Government drafted the National Agriculture Investment Programme (2010-2015) to guide pro-poor investments. Although the Government is party to the Maputo Declaration, which obliges national governments to allocate at least 10 per cent of their annual national budget to agriculture, its annual budget allocation to the agriculture sector remains less than 5 per cent.

However the Government is in the process of adopting a public/private partnership to fill critical gaps in the agriculture and rural development sectors in terms of investments and service provision. Thus the private sector is expected to assume a lead role in providing enterprise investment resources and entrepreneurial management, while the public sector plays facilitative and catalytic roles. In this context, efforts are being made to encourage public/private-sector investments in agriculture, especially in the production and expansion of field crops, and in livestock and horticulture.

Source: IFAD