Gambia News Agency (GAMNA)

The Gambia News Agency (GAMNA), also referred to in some official material as GNA, is The Gambia’s official government news agency, operating from offices at Kairaba Avenue, Fajara, in the Kanifing Municipality. GAMNA presents itself as the country’s official news agency, providing news on political, economic, social and cultural issues with the stated aim of strengthening national media and contributing to public awareness.

Media assets

News web and dispatch platform: gamna.gov.gm — daily and topical news on government activities, ministerial statements, public administration, health, international affairs and other public-interest categories; the navigation includes a Gamna Newswires section

Ownership and governance

GAMNA is The Gambia’s official government news agency, operating under the Ministry of Information, Media and Broadcasting Services. No standalone GAMNA founding statute, dedicated Act of Parliament, board statute or current legal instrument was identified in the public record during this review; the agency is described in official material as “the official media agency of the Republic of The Gambia” and is listed by the Union of OIC News Agencies (UNA) as the OIC-member national news agency for the country. The agency is integrated administratively into the MOIMBS structure that also covers the Department of Information Services, the Gambia Printing and Publishing Corporation, the Gambia Radio and Television Services, Digital Gambia Limited and the Information Commission — making MOIMBS the single supervising ministry for the country’s state-media architecture.

The agency is headed by a Director-General, who is the senior executive responsible for the agency’s day-to-day operations and editorial direction. The Director-General is Isatou Davis-Anne (the Union of OIC News Agencies directory headline uses the form Isato Davis-Anne while the body text uses Isatou Davis-Anne), publicly identified by the directory as GAMNA’s Director-General with a remit “to promote government transparency and provide accurate information to the public, thereby contributing to the strengthening of democracy and community participation in The Gambia.” The supervising ministry is led by Minister Ismaila Ceesay, appointed in 2024 and in office throughout the 2024-2026 review period.

GAMNA’s institutional design does not include a publicly identified board of trustees equivalent to GRTS’s, nor a publicly available editorial charter establishing arm’s-length governance, an ombudsman, or an external complaints procedure specific to the agency. The September 2025 ministerial framing of GAMNA as a “revived” institution within the MOIMBS portfolio places the agency in the same governance architecture as the other state-media entities under the ministry, with the supervising minister and the Director-General constituting the principal lines of accountability and direction.

Source of funding and budget

GAMNA is funded through the public-appropriations envelope under the Ministry of Information, Media and Broadcasting Services. The Ministry of Information parent-budget allocation was approximately GMD 67.60 million in the 2025 national budget, about 0.13 percent of the total national “All Funds” envelope, and no separately disclosed GAMNA-specific line item was identified in the publicly available budget material for 2024, 2025 or 2026.

The agency does not publish standalone audited annual reports or financial statements; the most reliable indicators of its operational position come from public statements by MOIMBS officials and from the broader pattern of institutional revival described by Minister Ceesay in his September 2025 ministerial town hall. The minister positioned GAMNA’s revival as part of a strategy to “provide reliable government information,” with the agency expected to feed into the wider government-communications architecture alongside GRTS, the Gambia Printing and Publishing Corporation and the expanding Gambia Daily newspaper. No publicly available external financing settlement, donor-supported funding stream, or commercial-revenue mechanism specific to GAMNA was identified during this review.

The agency’s continued reliance on public appropriations, without a transparent, independent funding settlement specific to the public-service news-agency function, is consistent with the broader pattern in The Gambia’s state-media architecture and the wider audit-attested weak public-sector financial management documented by the National Audit Office in other parts of the state-media portfolio (notably its 2025 management letter on GRTS).

Editorial independence

GAMNA’s editorial output is closely aligned with the communications priorities of the Government of The Gambia and the MOIMBS press-briefing cycle. The agency’s news platform foregrounds coverage of presidential activities (with President Adama Barrow and Vice President Muhammad Jallow frequently featured), ministerial statements, public-administration developments, social-welfare announcements, health communications and government-led international engagements. The gamna.gov.gm front-page editorial mix is consistent with a national news agency that functions as the country’s primary government-communications publishing and dispatch service rather than as an independent newsroom holding the government to public account.

Section 208 of the Constitution of The Gambia provides a general benchmark for state-owned media, referring specifically to state-owned newspapers, journals, radio and television providing fair opportunities for divergent views and dissenting opinions, and does not explicitly name news agencies. No GAMNA-specific mechanism was identified during this review that would independently enforce comparable pluralism or editorial-independence standards at the agency level. No publicly available GAMNA editorial charter, code of practice, complaints mechanism or arm’s-length appointment procedure was identified.

These structural conditions place GAMNA in the State-Controlled (SC) category. GAMNA is The Gambia’s official government news agency and is administratively integrated into the Ministry of Information, Media and Broadcasting Services portfolio alongside the country’s other state-media institutions. No standalone GAMNA statute, independent board structure, arm’s-length appointment process, independent funding settlement, published editorial charter, ombudsman or GAMNA-specific complaints mechanism was identified in the public record. The SC classification is therefore appropriate for GAMNA’s entry into the SMM dataset for 2026.

AI and digital policy

GAMNA operates a public-facing digital news platform at gamna.gov.gm and a Facebook page, both of which form part of the agency’s revived public-information distribution capacity under the MOIMBS modernisation agenda. No publicly available GAMNA-specific newsroom policy on AI-generated content, synthetic-media disclosure, content-provenance standards such as C2PA, or the use of generative-AI tools in editorial production was identified during this review.

June 2026