While the Gambia may be the smallest country on the entire African continent, poverty remains the nation’s most significant challenge. In 2020, the national poverty rate stood at a whopping 53.4%. This poverty rate mainly concentrates on the rural areas, where the majority of the people living there are very poor. This affects around 76% of the entire nation. The vast majority of the poor in the Gambia are farmers, with 75% of the poor and 91% of the extreme poor having a farming occupation. The Gambia ranks 174th out of 194 countries on the Human Development Index (HDI) in 2022, due to its struggles with global poverty.

To combat the impoverished conditions that consistently attack the nation, many projects have started up to help Gambia combat its ongoing battle with nationwide poverty. Here are some of those projects and their innovations in poverty eradication in Gambia. 

The Inspiring-Young Stars Program

The Inspiring-Young Stars Program is a Gambian nonprofit organization that kick-started in 2016, with its mission to transform the lives of children through education and service. This program puts a big emphasis on education because it believes education can reduce the impact of poverty in Gambia, despite not directly solving the problem itself. 

The Gambia struggles to improve its access to education due to its limited resources. This includes a lack of funding for education, teaching facilities and teachers. This leads to a vast majority of Gambia lacking quality education, as only 11% of children aged 7 to 14 demonstrate fundamental literacy skills and 9% in numerical skills. Ghana’s education system contributes to its high dropout rate of 29% among Gambian children. Because the Inspiring Young Stars programs believe education can help reduce poverty, they emerged as one of the major innovations in poverty eradication in Gambia.

The Micro-Gardening Project

One of the Inspiring-Young Stars Program’s many projects, which is considered extremely crucial, is the micro-gardening project. This project brings together children from their community libraries, youth volunteers and Charter School students to learn how to grow and care for a garden. This enables the students to learn the skills necessary to maintain a garden for growing vegetables and crops. This project not only serves as a way to learn technical skills, but it also serves as a space for learning critical life skills for the future. 

Other Projects

The program also hosts other projects that give Gambian children access to resources to teach themselves and others fundamental literacy skills. 

While there isn’t much data on what the organization has accomplished overall, the Inspiring-Young Stars Program continues to do projects that involve the Gambian youth to help them learn vital skills. Overall, such projects that this program gets involved in provide an education to children and other youth volunteers for crucial life skills, despite the adversities they all face. Through such projects, it helps get the Gambian youth involved in efforts to reduce poverty, making in one of the significant innovations in poverty eradication in Gambia.

International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is the world’s fund for transforming agriculture, rural economies and more. IFAD invests in rural people, who are often the most vulnerable and the world’s poorest like those in the Gambia. 

To reduce poverty levels in the Gambia, IFAD has developed a strategy to accomplish this. Because a majority of Gambia’s poor are farmers, taking specific action to help these farmers will support them in various aspects. On the financial aspect, this involves increasing their access to markets. In doing so, it allows these farmers to support themselves financially. 

This also involves increasing the value of certain crops by increasing the value chain participants. By increasing the value of crops through such means, it helps make it easier for farmers to support themselves financially. Their efforts to support the majority of Gambia’s poor make this one of the many innovations in poverty eradication in Gambia through making strides to improve both Gambia and other impoverished nations worldwide. 

Throughout its efforts, it has helped many of Gambia’s poor, especially its rural farmers. IFAD has supported 11 programs and projects in the Gambia that have all cost an estimated total of $287.21 million. IFAD has supported more than 195,000 rural households in the Gambia that are experiencing poverty. IFAD’s time and efforts to support Gambia’s poor, especially its farmers, have made it one of the main organizations that have utilized innovations in poverty eradication in Gambia through its strategic plan and objectives.

Concluding Thoughts

Efforts for organizations like IFAD and the Inspiring-Stars Program have helped combat the Gambia’s battle with poverty, which has helped improve conditions in the country. Whether it is expanding education or even helping farmers support themselves financially, the efforts they have had an impact on reducing poverty in the Gambia. 

– Pramod Sesh

Pramod is based in Iselin, NJ, USA and focuses on Technology and Celebs for The Borgen Project.

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