Word: gambia
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...stability of some of his peers is based on flimsier stuff. Gambia, which gained its freedom only last year, is too new and too tiny to give Prime Minister David Kairaba Jawara immediate cause for concern. French troops keep Gabon's President Léon Mba propped up in return for rights to his nation's uranium deposits. In Malawi, Prime Minister Hastings Banda is a demagogue who has banned everything except starvation, remains arrogant only because his army numbers only 800 men and is still commanded by British officers who are happy with the status...
...months ago Stuttgart's Institute of Foreign Relations published its latest revised edition of The National An thems of the World. It was outdated even before it went on sale. So fast are new nations emerging these days that the anthems of Africa's two newest, Gambia and Zambia, appeared after the anthology had gone to press. At last count there were more than 150 assorted anthems in the world, hailing the glories of every nation from Red China ("Build anew the Great Wall from flesh and blood, arise!") to tiny Liechtenstein ("Where the chamois freely jumps about...
...ceremonies at the capital at Bathurst, the British formally turned over sovereignty to the continent's smallest nation, a wriggle of land 200 miles long and 15 to 30 miles wide situated on both sides of the lower Gambia River. Except for its coast, it is entirely surrounded by the former French colony of Senegal, and one British governor-general called Gambia "a geographic and economic absurdity." The British, who arrived in Gambia in the 16th century, repeatedly tried to trade it off to France in exchange for better land. It has no railway, no airline, not even...
Enterprising traders do a brisk business smuggling cigarettes into neighboring West African countries through Gambia. The country imports enough cigarettes to supply 3½ packs a day to each of its 316,000 men, women and children, but sporadic attempts to diversify the economy have ended in disaster. A mining scheme failed (no minerals); an ambitious shark fishery collapsed (no demand). The British government put $2,000,000 into a model poultry farm outside Bathurst, but disease and bad feed killed off the chick ens, and after production of 40,000 eggs-at $50 an egg-the farm was transformed...
Despite its handicaps, Gambia's future is not unduly bleak. Premier David Kairaba Jawara, 41, a British-educated veterinarian ("There's not a cow in Gambia that doesn't know me personally") who turned to politics five years ago, is a no-nonsense democrat and competent administrator. He has already signed agreements with Senegal for mutual defense, economic cooperation and sharing of diplomatic missions. Solidly pro-British, he has also talked London into underwriting his tiny economy to the tune of $10 million over the next three years-and the U.S. has given $125,000 for agricultural...