The Gambia Tourism Board (GTBoard) has issued a warning that should have been issued ten years ago. And it should be read not as a press release, but as an alarm bell.
The Tourism Development Area — that precious half-mile coastal strip from Kotu to Kartong — is government land. By law, under the GTBoard Act 2011, only GTBoard can allocate it. Yet today, everyone is selling it. Alkalolu, VDCs, estate agents, speculators with a receipt book and a stamp. A piece of our coastline is being parcelled like garden plots at a local market.
GTBoard is right: those receipts confer no title. Those agreements are worthless. And those who buy them do so at their own risk.
But let us be honest about who is really at risk here.
It is not just the naive investor who loses his life savings. It is The Gambia that loses.
We lose when a hotel approved for eco-tourism becomes a private compound with a high wall blocking beach access for fishermen.
We lose when uncontrolled development destroys the very coastline tourists come to see — the mangroves, the nesting turtles, the dunes.
We lose when land disputes turn Kartong, Sanyang and Gunjur into conflict zones, with bulldozers at dawn and youth wielding cutlasses at dusk.
The law is clear. The enforcement has been weak.
Why are Alkalolu and VDCs able to sell land they do not own? Because there has been no consequence. Why do buyers go to them? Because GTBoard has often been distant, bureaucratic and slow, while the Alkalo is next door with an immediate “allocation letter.”
If we want to protect the TDA, a press release is not enough.
First, GTBoard must be visible by opening a desk in every coastal community from Kotu to Kartong. Publish a public cadastre of all legally allocated plots. Let anyone verify land status with a phone call or a code, not a trip to Banjul.
Secondly, government must enforce law and anyone — Alkalo, VDC chairman, or estate agent — facilitating unauthorised sale of TDA land should face prosecution for illegal land dealing.
Without enforcement, the warning is just paper.
Thirdly, communities must benefit. The reason some communities collude in illegal sales is that they feel dispossessed by tourism. They see hotels rising but no jobs, no market stalls, no share of revenue. If the TDA is to be protected, the communities that host it must have a legal, transparent stake in it.
The coastal strip from Kotu to Kartong is not just land. It is The Gambia’s economic future. It is the single greatest asset we have in tourism — an industry that employs thousands and feeds hundreds of families.
We cannot allow it to be sold, receipt by receipt, into chaos.
GTBoard has spoken. Now it must act — and government must back it.
The Tourism Development Area is not for sale.