[1507] Of the meandering Gambia

It’s a lot more interesting than just the map.

– Gambia was a british colony while Senegal was a a french one. France spend the first 25 years of the 20th century trying to get it. They almost succeeded by exchanging it with Ivory Coast (which later became, French Africa’s “jewell). Apparently it failed because of the opposition of the freed slaves (from UK) who had became the local elite.
– Gambia is a pain in Senegal’s ass. They did try to annex it a few times (mostly by diplomatic means) and finally settled for forcing Gambia to have the lowest crossing tarriffs possible.
– Gambia lives of smuggling. Litterally. The job of their minister of finance and their central bank is to adjust the currency so that smuggling stuff in or out Gambia could be profitable. That’s why they never joined the CFA Franc (google) even if they’re an enclave in the CFA Zone. (nowadays tourism, especially sexual tourism is becoming bigger than smuggling).
– Gambia didn’t have an army until 1987 (when Senegal imposed one so that someone could be serious about the smugglers).
– Gambia somehow managed to have open and relatively free elections until the early 90’s (when the newly created army staged a coup). One peculiar aspect of those elections was the pooling booth which involved stones (and not ballots) and pictures of the candidates on the boxes.

Gambia is interesting.