The Business End
COCOONED BY SENEGAL, The Gambia’s economic epicentre can be found on its western seafront, the country home to a 60-kilometre stretch of Atlantic coastline.
As such, re-export trade constitutes a large part of the nation’s economic activity, while rain-dependent agricultural activities are also a significant contributor and employ approximately
75 percent of the country’s entire labour force.
In more recent times, however, tourism has equally come to account for increasingly large proportions of GDP, owed to the three strands it is able to provide: traditional sun seeking holidays, culture trips and nature-centric excursions.
In fact, the number of international arrivals rose to 225,000 last year, surpassing the 171,000 tourism-related visitors recorded in 2017, helping to set the World Bank’s latest forecast that expects the country’s economy to grow by 5.4 percent this year and maintain similar growth through 2020.
This in mind, while economic development is still required, both in the way of diversification and infrastructure developments if the country is to make real progress, there has certainly been an air of optimism surrounding the country in recent times.