Gambia Radio & Television Services (GRTS)

Gambia Radio and Television Services (GRTS) is the state-owned national broadcaster of The Gambia, providing both television and radio services nationwide. GRTS operates a terrestrial and satellite television network and a chain of FM and MW radio channels, including Radio Gambia, the primary national radio production station, which traces its broadcasting roots back to the colonial-era Radio Gambia service. The corporation in its current form was formally incorporated under the Gambia Radio and Television Services Act of 2004, which defines it as a public-service entity owned and funded by the state.

Media assets

Television: GRTS TV — the national public-service television channel, with terrestrial and satellite coverage; officially reaching over 80 percent of the country’s territory, though effective audience reach is limited by frequent electricity outages and infrastructure shortfalls

Radio: Radio Gambia — the national radio service, with FM and MW transmission and local-language programming

Ownership and governance

GRTS’s statutory basis is the Gambia Radio and Television Services Act of 2004, which establishes the corporation as a public-service entity owned and funded by the state, with a Board of Directors that reports to the supervising Minister. The Director-General is appointed by the President of the Republic on the recommendation of the Minister responsible for information, and the Board Chair is also a presidential appointee. The Act frames GRTS in public-service-broadcasting terms, but no detailed statutory editorial-independence regime equivalent to those found in some other anglophone West African broadcasting statutes, including a non-direction clause insulating the corporation from government instruction, has been publicly verified for GRTS in the public record during this review.

The current Director-General is Abdoulie Sey, appointed in April 2023 and still publicly identified in the role in 2026, when he led GRTS in hosting the 17th African Union of Broadcasting (AUB) General Assembly in Banjul and gave remarks at the China Media Group “Our African Partners 2026” media event. Sey is an institutional insider who has worked across editorial roles at GRTS since 2007, rising from assistant producer through senior producer, principal producer, managing editor, editor-in-chief and director of news and current affairs before his appointment as Director-General. He attended Gambia High School and the University of The Gambia, and holds an MA in International Multimedia Journalism from the University of Kent (UK) as a Chevening scholar. Sey succeeded the previous Director-General, Malick Jeng. The current Deputy Director-General is Momodou M. Joof. The January 2025 AUB visit report identified Charles Camara as Chairman of the GRTS Board of Directors, while a March 2025 GRTS account records that the Board was represented in meetings with the AUB delegation visiting Banjul by Vice Chair Kemo Conteh.

The supervising ministry was renamed and reorganised under President Barrow’s administration; the previous Ministry of Information and Communication Infrastructure (MOICI) framing was superseded by the Ministry of Information, Media and Broadcasting Services, established in 2022 as part of a wider strategy to build a modern and inclusive communications system, with a portfolio explicitly including state-media oversight. The Minister, Ismaila Ceesay, was appointed in 2024 (around the time of the May 2024 OIC Summit preparations) and has remained in office throughout the 2024-2026 review period; the ministry oversees the Department of Information Services, the Gambia Printing and Publishing Corporation, GRTS, Digital Gambia Limited and the Information Commission. The Information Commission, chaired by Neneh Macdouall-Gaye, is responsible for implementing the Access to Information Act.

Source of funding and budget

GRTS operates on a public-sector funding model combining direct government grants from the national budget with state-administered levy transfers, including, per the SMM baseline record, revenue derived from the Global System for Mobile (GSM) levy on telecommunications operators (collected by the state and partially allocated to the broadcaster), and limited operational and advertising income; no recent audited GRTS financial statement was identified that would allow the current proportions of these revenue streams to be independently verified. The broadcaster has historically not published recent audited financial reports, and no comprehensive standalone financial statement for 2024 or 2025 has been identified during this review. Public information indicates that government support, including direct grants and levy transfers, continues to provide the majority of GRTS’s revenue, with the broadcaster experiencing recurrent staff salary pressure and equipment shortfalls.

The Ministry of Information’s parent-budget allocation was approximately GMD 67.60 million in the national budget for 2025, representing about 0.13 percent of the total national “All Funds” envelope. No publicly disclosed GRTS-specific line item was identified within that allocation. Independent audit work provides additional context: the National Audit Office’s GRTS Management Letter for the year ended 31 December 2021, released in April 2025, identified material control weaknesses including unreconciled inter-entity receivables with Digital Gambia Limited (DGL) that had grown from approximately GMD 1.9 million in 2020 to GMD 6.3 million in 2021 without supporting contractual evidence, an Africell Gambia Limited advertising-services barter arrangement, and recommendations that GRTS Management engage the Board of Directors to review the GRTS Act and incorporate updated provisions. These findings underline the broader pattern of weak financial management documented at the broadcaster.

External infrastructure support has been a recurring feature of the review period. Ahead of the 15th Islamic Summit Conference (Banjul Summit) held on 4-5 May 2024, the Chinese Embassy in Banjul, through Ambassador Liu Jin, presented GRTS with a cheque for over GMD 2 million for the purchase of cameras to cover the summit’s broadcast requirements, and GRTS reached out to Senegal’s Radiodiffusion Télévision Sénégalaise (RTS) for additional technical assistance, both arrangements illustrating the broadcaster’s continued reliance on external partnerships for major-event coverage capability. The Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TIKA) had earlier presented broadcasting equipment worth approximately GMD 1.8 million to GRTS in December 2023, again in advance of the OIC Summit.

The 2025-2026 modernisation agenda is framed around digital migration. Digital Gambia Limited (DGL) is spearheading the transition to digital terrestrial broadcasting, with the next infrastructure phase reported at more than €11 million, presented by the Ministry of Information as part of the wider restructuring of the state-media architecture; the relationship between GRTS and DGL has also been the subject of audit scrutiny on financial-management grounds.

Editorial independence

GRTS’s editorial line has been widely regarded as closely aligned with the government in power, despite the public-service framing in its founding statute. Section 208 of the Constitution of The Gambia requires state-owned media to offer “fair opportunities and facilities for the presentation of divergent views and dissenting opinions.” However, no GRTS-specific public-service charter, independent appointment mechanism, ombudsman or enforceable complaints procedure was identified during this review that would independently monitor or enforce this constitutional requirement.

The most notable internal-discipline case in the immediately preceding period remains the 2022 directive in which GRTS staff were instructed to avoid coverage of industrial-action protests, denounced by the Gambia Press Union (GPU) as a clear act of censorship. Public commentary on GRTS’s partisan use in electoral coverage has continued during the 2024-2026 period.

The wider press-environment trajectory has been mixed. The 2018 Supreme Court ruling declaring criminal defamation unconstitutional remains the period’s most significant legal reform, and The Gambia ranked 46th of 180 in the 2026 RSF World Press Freedom Index (up from 58th in both 2024 and 2025), placing it 8th in Africa and matching the country’s previous 2023 high. The Askanwi fact-checking newsroom has cautioned that the headline 2026 figure should be read against the broader global decline in press-freedom conditions: RSF still classes the country in the “problematic” category, and Askanwi flags the recent two-year pattern as stagnation rather than improvement, with weak media financing and unpaid government obligations among the structural concerns.

Several 2024-2026 developments have raised press-freedom concerns specifically affecting state-media editorial conditions and the wider environment in which GRTS operates. In September 2024, journalists from The Voice newspaper were arrested and charged with “false publication and broadcasting” over a report concerning President Barrow’s alleged exit plans. On 3 September 2024, Environment Minister Rohey John Manjang filed a libel and slander suit against journalist Kebba Ansu Manneh of The Alkamba Times. On 27 March 2025, Minister Ceesay summoned the editor of The Voice newspaper, the Gambia Press Union, the Media Council and the Newspaper Publishers Association over a headline based on an Afrobarometer survey reporting declining public trust in government; the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) condemned the summons as intimidation. A draft Cybercrime Bill remains under preparation, with the Gambia Press Union, FactCheck Gambia and Civicus warning that its provisions could threaten press freedom and digital rights if not amended. A more directly broadcaster-relevant 2026 development was the package of proposed Broadcasting and Online Content Regulations 2026, Broadcasting and Online Content Licensing, Registration and Authorisation Guidelines 2026 and Journalists Registration Guidelines 2026, advanced by the Ministry of Information and the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA). At an emergency meeting on 8 April 2026 and in a resolution issued on 10 April 2026, the Gambia Press Union, under President Isatou Keita, together with regulatory, professional, academic and civil-society stakeholders, totally rejected the proposals and refused to participate in PURA’s public consultation; the resolution argued that the proposed regime would give PURA arbitrary state-controlled powers to register, suspend or revoke registration of journalists, online media houses and influential social-media users, and would be inconsistent with Principle 17 of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights Declaration of Principles on Freedom of Expression and Access to Information in Africa.

These structural conditions place GRTS in the State-Controlled (SC) category. GRTS is The Gambia’s state-owned national broadcaster, established under the Gambia Radio and Television Services Act of 2004 and supervised by the Ministry of Information, Media and Broadcasting Services. Its Director-General is appointed through executive channels, and the board structure remains under state appointment and ministerial oversight. Although Section 208 of the Constitution requires state-owned media to provide fair opportunities for divergent and dissenting views, no GRTS-specific public-service charter, independent appointment system, ombudsman, enforceable complaints mechanism or independent funding settlement was identified during this review. The broadcaster remains dependent on direct public support, state-administered revenue streams and external infrastructure assistance, while recent audit findings highlight weaknesses in financial management and inter-entity accounting with Digital Gambia Limited. The SC classification therefore continues to apply for 2026.

AI and digital policy

GRTS operates a digital news platform at grts.gm alongside its core terrestrial and satellite broadcasting. At the sector level, two major regulatory developments define the period. The Personal Data Protection and Privacy Bill was passed by the National Assembly on 29 September 2025 and assented to by President Barrow on 7 November 2025, becoming the Personal Data Protection and Privacy Act, 2025, The Gambia’s first comprehensive personal-data-protection law.

June 2026