The Gambia has not benefited from the donor community since we came to power, despite several promises - Yahya AJJ Jammeh. The Gambia has received £4.8m (96 million Dalasi) in aid from Britain since the resumption of bilateral aid in 1998. Making the disclosure yesterday at the opening of the Department for International Development (DFID) office in The Gambia, the British High Commissioner, Tony Millson, explained that the programme covers areas like economic management and capacity-building, assistance to the office of the Auditor General and mainstreaming poverty and gender. Others are records management, capacity-building for community-based organisations and support to the country's Education Master Plan through the Education Management Project. He expressed the belief that the DFID office will, among other things, strengthen existing partnerships and develop new ones as well as work more closely with the Gambia government and the civil society and other donors towards achieving poverty reduction in the country. Asked to comment on a statement credited to President Jammeh that since he came to power six years ago, The Gambia has not benefited from the donor community, despite several promises, the high commissioner said, "it is surprising," considering the active involvement of the World Bank and the European Commission, 17% of whose financial commitments are of British extraction, in the country's economic development process. The DFID resident representative, Maureen Morrison, later spoke in an interview of her delight at the "healthy and productive" dialogue among stakeholders in the country's poverty alleviation framework, a point corroborated by Dr Robin Milton, the agency's social development adviser for West and North Africa. ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html ----------------------------------------------------------------------------