The Gambia

The Gambia is an anglophone West African country of around 2.8 million people, with its capital at Banjul and the dalasi (GMD) as its currency. The country is a member of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the African Union and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). President Adama Barrow of the National People’s Party (NPP) has been in office since the January 2017 democratic transition that ended Yahya Jammeh’s twenty-two-year rule; Barrow won the December 2021 presidential election, and the next presidential election is due in late 2026. The Vice President is Muhammad / Mohammed B. S. Jallow (the Office of the Vice President uses Mohammed B. S. Jallow, while other sources also render the first name as Muhammad).

State media operate under the Ministry of Information, Media and Broadcasting Services (MOIMBS), whose current name was formally adopted in October 2024; Minister Ismaila Ceesay has presented the ministry architecture as part of the government’s wider communications-system strategy dating to 2022. The Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA) regulates the wider broadcasting and telecommunications sector under the Information and Communication Act 2009. The 2018 Supreme Court ruling striking down criminal defamation and some online false-news provisions remains the most significant post-Jammeh-era pro-press legal reform, although parts of sedition and false-publication law remained in force.

The Gambia ranked 46th of 180 in the 2026 RSF World Press Freedom Index with a score of 69.42 (up from 58th in 2025) while still in the “problematic” band; Askanwi cautioned that the figure should be read as stagnation against the broader global decline. Three review-period developments shape the environment: the September 2024 arrest of two Voice newspaper journalists over a report on President Barrow’s alleged exit plan, with charges discontinued on 10 December 2024; the Personal Data Protection and Privacy Act, 2025, passed on 29 September 2025 and assented to by Barrow on 7 November 2025; and the 25 April 2026 launch of the National Misinformation and Disinformation Response Centre, developed with Dundal Systems as technical lead and ECOWAS support/funding. The proposed 2026 Broadcasting and Online Content Regulations and related licensing/registration guidelines were rejected by the Gambia Press Union under President Isatou Keita and other stakeholders on 10 April 2026 as inconsistent with Principle 17 of the ACHPR Declaration of Principles on Freedom of Expression.

Two state media outlets are tracked in the SMM dataset for The Gambia, both State-Controlled. The Gambia Radio and Television Services (GRTS) is the national public broadcaster, established under the Gambia Radio and Television Services Act of 2004, supervised by MOIMBS, and led by Director-General Abdoulie Sey (since April 2023). GRTS served as the main national broadcast partner for the 15th OIC Summit in May 2024 and hosted the 17th African Union of Broadcasting General Assembly in April 2026; the National Audit Office’s 2021 management letter identified material control weaknesses in GRTS-Digital Gambia Limited inter-entity accounting. The Gambia News Agency (GAMNA) is the official government news agency, integrated into the MOIMBS portfolio and identified by the Union of OIC News Agencies as the country’s UNA member, with Director-General Isatou Davis-Anne; GAMNA was publicly revived under the September 2025 ministerial agenda, with no standalone founding statute or current legal instrument identified in the public record.

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