Saiks,

You have raised many varied and interesting points on which I shall do my
best to shed some more light. First of all, let me tell you that I know
poverty to my finger tips and that my knowledge of poverty is from a very
close encounter. I did not read about it. I have lived in it. You see Saiks,
I was born into what you can term a relaticely well-off family and grew up
seeing what wealth and generousity can do. I also lived through a period of
living a life of deprivation and seeing how some people repay kindness and
generousity when you no longer have what yiu used to have.

As a kid growing up in Kuntaur (CRD), I have witnessed how dozens of my
relatives and friends of my family from the Baddibus, Bakau, Serekunda and
Banjul would regularly visit or come for holidays. i have also witnessed how
some would even spend the whole trade season with us. I saw how my late
father cared for dozens of them out of relationship and kindness. I have
also seen how, within a space of about eight years, he lost almost
everything. First, it was a major burglary that left us almost penniless,
then a fire that gutted our entire compound, closely followed by the
devastating devastating drought of the 70s and the departure of the first
Taiwanese mission from The Gambia, when we switched recognisation from
Taiwan to China. Saiks, my Dad was a rice and groundnut farmer as well as a
businessman. Seeing how some folks repaid the generousity of my late Dad (He
died in 1979) gave me first-hand lessons on wealth, friendship, poverty and
of dignity.

Having said that, let me now turn to the $10 million rural development
project that we beginning to implement in the northern half of the country.
The project involses the laying of about 350 Kms of fibre-optic cable from
Basse to Barra and completing the loop to Banjul using a digital microwave
link. The main purpose of doing this is to first of all provide the
necessary security for the South Bank fibre in case there is a major
catastrophe with it. You know that fibre, not only carries rural traffic,
but also national TV and radio broadcasts as well. Secondly, it allows us to
develop telecommunications on the North bank to the same level as that on
the south bank of The river Gambia.

I had mentioned sometime back that, access to information particularly in
rural areas, is one way of fighting poverty. If our poor rural folks, need
only travel a few Kilometres and have access to a phone to speak to their
loved ones far away in the Greater Banjul rather than travelling dozens of
kilometres just to make that call, you are saving them both time and money.
If a poor farmer in Karantaba can call Banjul from Karantaba to inform his
child that he/she badly needs money rather than borrowing money and
travelling all the way to Banjul, only to learn that his/her kid has been
trasnferred to say Kiang or some other place, you would be saving him/her
and his/her child anguish, time, money and effort.

Thirdly, if we agree that education and health are important pre-requisites
for development in this day and age, and that in both cases the exchange of
information has a big role to play, then the need to bring that to our rural
folks is an absolute neccessity. Before you ask me how it would be powered
when there is no electricity in the rural areas, let me tell you that they
are normally solar-powered. The rural electrification project, announced
earlier, would also come in very handy later.

Fourthly Saiks, we all know that most of the rural folks who leave behind
their families and come to the GBA do so to find work. If you can provide
electricity and access to communications in some of these rural areas, there
exists a good chance that some light industries may be located there and
provide much needed employment. The Kuntaur groundnut mill provided jobs for
thousands of people in the area until the former inept government moved it
to Kaur. The result? Kuntaur is now almost a ghost town. The tug boats and
barges that used to employ people and transport goods very cheaply up and
down the river all disappeared. In those days, nobody dreamt of leaving
Kuntaur for Banjul, Bakau or Serekunda.

Coming to the roads being constructed, I do not know of any that has not
been very long overdue. At a time when we are embarking on the Banjul
Gateway project which establishes a trade free zone within the airport with
the possibility of having several industries there, then the need for the
dual carriageway linking it to Serekunda makes a lot of sense to me. Linking
the same airport with the other economic zones of the country such as Kerr
Serigne, Bijilo, Tanje, Sanyang, Kartong, Gunjur etc, also makes a lot of
sense to me.

Finally saiks, you seem to think that some of the investments in
infrastructure being undertaken are somehow not priority projects. If that
is your view, you cannot be more wrong. When potential investors come to a
country and find that most of the essential infrastructures such as good
roads, reliable electricity, good communications facilities, peace and
security, a reasonably developed human resource base and of course good
governance exist, they more likely to consider investing in that country
than when they are not available. You see Saiks, a friend of mine in the
tourism industry told a few days ago, that two tourists came to The Gambia
for the first time two years ago and were so smitten with the country that
they came back again this year. The changes they saw impressed them so much
that they decided to start up something here. During their stay, they
established that potatoes consumed in Gambia, though imported from mainly
Holland are actually grown in South Africa.

After their return, they came back again after a few weeks but this time
with some agronomists. You see, these two tourists happen to be major
potatoe farmers. Anyway having established that our soil is indeed very good
for potatoe farming, they sought and got allocated land for farming potatoes
for local consumption and export to the sub-region.

For a start, they would sink boreholes for irrigation and are likely to
start in ernest early next year. They plan to employ a little over 1,000
(Over one thousand) full-time farm workers in the first year and hope to
employ as much as six thousand within five years. This would have
significant impact on the lives of the tens of thousands of people who
depend on those workers.

As to whether mordernising the air has had much impact on tourist arrivals,
I do not know. Two things I do know however, are that the constraint we have
in tourist arrivals are mainly due to the limited number of available beds
as well as the quality of our product, amongst others. Improve on these, a
friend told me, and we can double the number arrivals within five years.

another thing I do know is that the number of aircraft landings and
take-offs have more than trebbled during the past five years. At the moment
no less than three dozen flights a week take-off from Banjul International
Airport for various destinations. The recent decision of Afrinat
International Airlines to use The Gambia as its hub into West Africa and
operating three weekly flights to Newyork from Banjul is a case in point. I
am sure when they start plying this route the number of flights from the
sub-region would drastically increase. This means more jobs for Gambians as
well as more revenue for the GCAA. Like I keep saying, "There is a time in
the life of every problem when it is big enough to see, yet small enough to
solve (Mike Levitt)". we are surely getting there!!!!

Have a good day, Gassa.


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