The Role of Education in the Gambian
Diaspora and Its Potential Impact in Restoring Democracy and
Economic Development in the Motherland
(Remarks on The Gambia’s 40th Independence Anniversary
Celebration, Detroit, Michigan, USA, March 26, 2005)
Good Evening:
Fellow Gambians, Friends of The Gambia, Ladies and gentleman.
I have been asked to discuss with you briefly the role of education
in a changing and globalizing world and its implications for
The Gambia, but before I do, allow me, first, to thank Modou
Jah, Modou Jatta, Ramou Ceesay-Gaye, specifically, and the Gambian
community in Michigan for their kind invitation, and hospitality.
My wife, Paula and I are honored and extremely delighted to
be here and appreciate greatly the opportunity to be present
at this celebration marking The Gambia’s independence
from Britain on February 18, 1965.
Secondly, allow me to thank Gambians in Michigan on behalf of
all Gambians at home for the generous financial support you
render your families and loved ones in The Gambia and elsewhere.
This is support often times rendered under challenging financial
and economic circumstances. It is a sacrifice that our families
and all Gambians appreciate. In the aftermath of the groundnut
industry’s collapse and mounting inflation, Gambians by
and large depend on remittances from abroad. In fact, The Gambia
Central Bank estimates that Gambians abroad, who number from
70,000 to 80,000, send home approximately $25 million annually.
This official figure, however, does not include remittances
conducted through unofficial and informal channels. In fact,
the total unofficial cash flow from Gambians abroad to The Gambia
could be as high as $50 million a year. If Gambians abroad were
to stop sending money to their families for a few months, the
APRC regime could not survive politically, perhaps economically
for long. It is also estimated that 75 to 80 percent of pilgrims
to the annual Hajj in Mecca are sponsored by Gambians abroad.
The Gambia and your families love and appreciate you for all
that you do.
By setting aside this evening to celebrate forty
years since the end of British colonial rule in The Gambia,
you also help celebrate The Gambia’s rich and diverse
cultural heritage maintain, sustain, and at the same time renew
the ties that bind all Gambians in the Diaspora to this tiny
but beautiful country, and its peoples. In celebrating The Gambia,
and its peoples you recognize, and highlight the significance
and contributions of The Gambia to a world of economic interconnectedness
and interrelated cultures. In setting aside this evening to
celebrate The Gambia, Gambians in Michigan showcase to the larger
community, The Gambia in all its beauty, majesty and, yes, its
contradictions. And contrary to the presumption that globalization
has the inevitable effect of undermining many non-Western cultures,
this evening in Detroit, Michigan reaffirms the historic resilience
and changing nature of Gambian culture and its peoples.
This enduring, yet changing nature of Gambian
culture in particular, has to do in part, with The Gambia’s
geographic and cultural location, which lies at the confluence
of three major cultural civilizations- African, Islamic, and
European. These civilizations have together shaped and continue
to shape Gambian culture. Thus, ours is a mixed one with the
African and Islamic strands being the most dominant. In other
words, we live in a world where cultures are not static but
open, and permeable. Trade, technology, information, travel,
and ideas such as democracy and human rights integrate the world.
And while we are all aware of the potential negative effects
of globalization, as Gambians in the Diaspora, we must position
ourselves and likewise embrace the opportunities that globalization
offers rather than retreat from them.
An assured way to position and harness the opportunities
that globalization affords us is to acquire a good education
for ourselves and our children. A good education is no longer
a luxury reserved for the wealthy- it is a necessity for upward
mobility in the U.S. and all other societies for that matter
in this age of globalization. Yet by education, I do not mean
formal education alone. Living in a post-industrial democracy
such as the U.S.A. gives us the opportunity to participate both
formally and informally in a democratic society. I, therefore,
commend my Gambian brothers and sisters who work at factories,
gas stations, restaurants as bus-boys, hotels as maids, and
nursing and private homes as nurse’s assistants, because
in their stay in the U.S.A., these Gambians have developed or
are developing valuable skills and a strong work and service
ethic that could greatly benefit The Gambia in the future. I
applaud you, and likewise, encourage you to enroll in school.
Enrolling in school would, however, require making difficult
choices, but choices well worth it in the end. I also applaud
and encourage Gambians already in school to pursue their educational
goals to the highest degree. Though sometimes difficult, it
is ultimately a very rewarding path. Most importantly, I also
encourage our mature women folk, younger women and girls to
be especially relentless in pursuing an education because as
the saying goes, “when you educate a man, you educate
a person, and when you educate a woman, you educate a nation.”
All Gambians in the Diaspora and especially those that live
in the U.S. Europe and other democratic societies must continue
to develop and embrace the democratic values of debate and tolerance
of different points of view. We must also learn to disagree
without being necessarily disagreeable. These are democratic
values we will all need to rebuild once many return to The Gambia.
However, education just for the sake of education
or education without social responsibility has little or no
redeeming value. Therefore, we must be humbled by our education
to enable us to use it for the improvement not only of ourselves
and our families, but our communities, our country of origin
and humanity as a whole. This also means that as sojourners
we must remain engaged in the societies we live in as well as
in The Gambia. Gambians abroad and those in the great state
of Michigan in particular, are engaged in all kinds of fruitful
ventures to improve themselves, Michigan, the U.S.A., and The
Gambia. In particular, your effort to raise funds to help in
purchasing a community center to empower the Gambian community
and others is admirable. Also, in Atlanta, Georgia and other
states in this great union, Europe and elsewhere, Gambians are
contributing needed funds to a non-profit, tax-exempt, non-governmental
international organization to support the restoration of democracy
and the rule of law in The Gambia. This organization is none
other than “Save The Gambia Democracy Project.”
Please contribute generously to this worthy cause through Jim
Gaye who is the coordinator of Save The Gambia Democracy Project
in Michigan. For those of a different political persuasion,
Atlanta is also home to a pro-APRC organization. Support them
generously as well, even if I personally disagree with them
and the APRC regime they support. This is all part of building
a future democratic culture based on tolerance for political
difference. Because in the end, the education and other skills
that we have or hope to acquire in the U.S. and other countries
would be of little use if The Gambia continues to be ruled by
a military dictatorship under a democratic veneer where the
human rights of Gambians are consistently violated.
As the Burmese political activist, and Nobel
laureate, Aug San Suu Kyi argued so eloquently, “the national
culture can become a bizarre graft of carefully selected and
distorted social values intended to justify the politics and
actions of those in power.” This is the state of affairs
in our homeland as we speak. To avoid this, Aug San Suu Kyi
contends that it is possible to conceive of rights “which
place human worth above power and liberation over control.”
I urge all of you to get engaged in the current political discourse
in The Gambia, engage others in debate and discussion over modalities
of establishing a true democracy in The Gambia in order to end
military tyranny.
This evening’s celebration of The Gambia’s
40th independence anniversary in Detroit, Michigan is reaffirmation
that this tiny country whose viability at independence forty
years ago was in question has survived in spite of the odds.
Yet survival alone is not enough. We must, together, rebuild
a country in which we, as well as future generations of Gambians
can take pride in and be inspired to serve. That we in the U.S.A.
and Michigan, specifically, joining hands with women and men
in The Gambia must work toward a day when true freedom and democracy
reign in our motherland. Too much is at risk when we are indifferent
and/ or complacent to what is going on in The Gambia.
In conclusion, I commend the Gambian community
of Michigan, their friends, and neighbors and implore you to
work together in gaining good educational and technical skills
for the restoration of democracy and the reconstruction of our
beloved country which lies ahead. After a decade of misrule,
corruption and countless deaths, the task is indeed a daunting
one. The point is that all of us count- by voting, writing and/
or signing petitions, demonstrating, joining issue-oriented
groups, donating money, and if possible our time to the party
of your choice. The reality is that few individual actions are
dramatic, and by themselves few significantly would change politics
in The Gambia, but the sum of many small actions can and does
make a difference. Do not consider politics a spectator sport.
It is more important than that. It is not too presumptuous to
argue, therefore, that we have arrived at a crucial crossroads
in the paths by which we organize and conduct politics in The
Gambia.
Contemplation of that junction brings to mind
Robert Frost and his famous poem, The Road not Taken. It is
time to take that political path. Finally, I wish to share with
you words of the late Senator Benjamin Hill Jr. who said: “Who
saves his country saves himself, saves all things, and all things
saved do bless him. Who lets his country die, lets all things
die, dies himself ignobly, and all things dying curse him. (1893).
In closing allow me to bring to your attention
a newly published book I co-authored with two colleagues called
Not Yet Democracy: West Africa’s Slow Farewell to Authoritarianism.
Should you be interested in looking at it, please talk to me
after my remarks.
Publisher: Carolina Academic Press, (700 Kent Street, Durham,
NC 27701); www.cap-press.com;
Email:cap@cap-press.com;
Tel: 919-489-7486.
