By Securing Futures: Land Rights Action Collaborative (SFLRAC)
As advocates for Kombo’s dispossessed land-owning communities, SFLRAC has been closely following the unfolding controversy around Essa Mbye Faal’s involvement in Karenti (the Tanji Bird Reserve) land allocation. This situation hits close to home for us, touching on the core issues we deal with every day: how power influences land decisions, who gets access to ancestral lands, and whether our state institutions truly serve communities or just elite interests.
So, we can’t look at Faal’s presidential fitness without also considering these wider issues of land justice and fair governance.
The Land Rights Lens
We set up SFLRAC because we realised Kombo’s land challenges are rarely just about land. They’re about power, justice, and the basic question of who truly counts in our democracy. When we examine the Faal controversy through this lens, we see patterns that go far beyond one individual’s business dealings. We see a governance system that keeps favouring those with connections while marginalising the very communities whose ancestral claims predate all modern legal frameworks and even the Gambian nation-state.
The apparent ease with which Faal navigated TDA land allocation processes, whatever the outcome, reveals a troubling reality for the communities we serve. While these dispossessed families struggle for decades to protect or regain their ancestral land rights, often battling bureaucratic indifference and legal hurdles, people with professional credentials and political connections can easily secure meetings with presidents and ministers to talk about their investments. This difference in access is a huge problem in how our land governance system works.
Beyond Individual Conduct: Systemic Patterns
Faal’s detailed response to the allegations is important context, and we’re not dismissing his claims that he followed proper procedures or that he ultimately didn’t benefit from the process. But our concern goes beyond just individual corruption. We want to look at what this controversy really shows us about the systemic failures in land governance that are affecting thousands of Gambian families.
The jurisdictional conflict between GTBoard and the Department of Parks and Wildlife authorities, which seems to be at the heart of this case, reflects a broader problem we see all the time in our advocacy work. Different government agencies operate with overlapping mandates and conflicting priorities, creating confusion that typically disadvantages communities and violates their rights.
What really stands out to us about this whole controversy is what’s missing from the narrative: any sign that the state agencies consulted the local landowning community. This shows a consistent gap in land governance, where technical and legal talks happen without ever acknowledging the communities whose lives and livelihoods decisions impacted directly.
Presidential Leadership and Land Justice
As we think about Faal’s suitability for president, we need to ask if his actions in this controversy show the kind of leadership that would really push for land justice for communities. His extensive international legal experience and work with the TRRC certainly show he’s technically capable and committed to accountability. This Bird Reserve controversy however makes us question his grasp of how elite privilege works in land governance, and whether he is committed to dismantling the system that dispossess communities of their landed inheritance.
A president with even a modicum of dedication to land justice would recognise that true transparency in land governance means more than just following current procedures; it requires asking if those procedures even serve community interests, or if they just benefit the elite. It entails understanding that ancestral land rights deserve recognition even when these conflict with development plans. Most importantly, it requires making sure that landowning communities have meaningful voice in decisions affecting their lands.
When Faal lists this piece of land in his campaign asset declaration, even if doing so was technically legal and meant to show transparency, it hints at a worrying disconnect from what it is like for communities who have lost ancestral lands to state-sanctioned disinheritance. For communities fighting against systemic assault on their inheritance, seeing a presidential candidate publicly claim ownership of such lands could easily feel like another instance of elite capture of community resources.
Environmental Justice and Community Rights
Environmental protection and community land rights are not inherently in conflict, despite how some portray them in policy discussions. Communities have been effective environmental stewards for centuries–a fact that often gets lost in policy discussions.
We feel it inappropriate to frame the Karenti issue as either bird habitat protection or tourism development–a clear case of a false binary that ignores community conservation and development models. Community-led approaches could honour both environmental protection goals and community land rights while ensuring sustainable tourism benefits reach local populations.
What Communities Need
Rather than simply assessing Faal’s national leadership fitness/suitability, this controversy should compel all presidential candidates to articulate clear visions for land governance reform that centres the rights of communities and environmental justice. The Gambia needs leaders who understand that land disputes are fundamentally about belonging, power, and recognition–not just technical property rights.
Any serious presidential candidate should commit to establishing a unified Land Commission with clear authority to coordinate between agencies and resolve jurisdictional conflicts. This body should include community representatives and operate with full transparency. They must mandate meaningful consultation with affected communities before any land allocation or boundary changes, including requirements for community consent, not just consultation, for decisions affecting ancestral lands and inheritance.
Our Assessment
While this controversy shows no evidence of corruption that would or should disqualify Faal from consideration for the presidency, it raises legitimate concerns about his understanding of land justice issues and by extension his commitment to the kind of systemic reforms that this country desperately needs. His technical competence and international experience are valuable assets, no doubt, but he must couple these with genuine awareness of how governance systems perpetuate dispossession, destroy generational wealth of others whilst facilitating building up the same for another. There is something fundamentally wrong about that.
Gambians have suffered from poor leadership for far too long. They deserve a break. They deserve leaders who would not only maintain personal integrity but actively work to ensure that governance systems serve the interest of the many rather than advancing the interests of elites. Whether Faal or any other candidate meets this criteria requires continued scrutiny and engagement from all Gambians, but especially communities whose voices are too often absent from political discourse.
Our democratic future and dare I say, the continued viability as a nation-state, depends not on finding perfect candidates (a humanly impossible task), but on choosing leaders capable of recognising and addressing the systemic inequities that this controversy has highlighted. The communities we serve and by extension the entire Gambian society, deserve nothing less than leaders who understand that true governance reform must centre those who have been most marginalised by existing systems.
Securing Futures: Land Rights Action Collaborative (SFLRAC) is a think tank established in 2025. Committed to empowering Kombo’s dispossessed land-owning communities, SFLRAC combines participatory action with rigorous, evidence-based research to secure ancestral land rights, advocate for equitable governance policies, protect cultural heritage, and advance sustainable development.
