In the rice-growing communities of the Central River Region, the dry season used to mean one thing: the fields go quiet. Without irrigation, without reliable inputs, without access to credit, smallholder farmers grew what the rains allowed and waited for the next cycle. The wet season defined the calendar. Everything else came after.

That calculus is changing. Under the "Project 2 of the Programme to Strengthen Resilience to Food and Nutrition Insecurity in the Sahel" (P2-P2RS), farmers across 19 districts in the Lower River, Central River and West Coast Regions are gaining access to improved seeds, mechanised ploughing services, solar-powered irrigation infrastructure and climate-smart inputs. The P2-P2RS is a $17.75 million initiative co-funded by the African Development Fund (ADF). For the first time in many of these communities, year-round cultivation is becoming a realistic prospect.

"The rice I harvested is used to feed my family, provides income, and also gives me hope for the future." Jonyeh Dampha, rice farmer, Jenoi village, Lower River Region, The Gambia

The P2-P2RS serves 67,200 direct and indirect beneficiaries. It is one of three major AfDB-funded agricultural programmes currently active in The Gambia, alongside the Regional West Africa Resilient Rice Value Chains Development Programme (REWARD), launched nationally in July 2025. REWARD targets 8,000 households and 120,000 indirect beneficiaries with modern irrigation clusters, improved seed systems and market linkages. Together, they represent the most concentrated agricultural investment the country has seen.

Why food security is The Gambia's central challenge

Rice is not simply a crop in The Gambia. It is the staple food, with per capita consumption of around 117 kilograms per year, more than twice the global average. Yet only around 19 per cent of that is produced domestically.

The structural challenge is a combination of factors that have historically made domestic production uncompetitive: dependence on rainfed agriculture in a country where rainfall is seasonal and increasingly erratic, limited access to improved seeds and inputs, inadequate post-harvest infrastructure, and thin links between farmers and markets. The result is that The Gambia, a country with a river running through it, and millions of hectares of potentially irrigable lowland, imports most of what its people eat.

The investments now underway are designed to attack exactly that gap. REWARD will provide modern irrigation infrastructure, improved seed systems and mechanisation services within private sector-led integrated rice production clusters. P2-P2RS rehabilitates gardens and rice fields, distributes climate-smart seeds and fertiliser, and supports small ruminant and poultry production as a parallel income stream for vulnerable households. The Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP), also AfDB-supervised, connects smallholder farm output directly to the school feeding programme, ensuring that what farmers grow is purchased locally and delivered as meals to 39,397 school children.

"Before this initiative, I cultivated crops without certainty about buyers or fair prices. Today, I can plan my production with confidence, invest in expanding my farm, and consistently supply fresh crops and vegetables to schools. The stable income I now earn has improved my family's livelihood and given me renewed hope for the future." Satou Hata Ceesay, aggregator and farmer, Mamud Fana Village, The Gambia

What infrastructure opened

Agriculture tells one part of the story. Two other changes set the conditions for everything else.

The Senegambia Bridge, completed in stages between 2019 and June 2025, ended a crossing bottleneck that had added days, sometimes weeks, to journey times along the Trans-Gambia corridor. Today more than 15,000 vehicles cross daily, against 532 before the bridge opened. Transport costs for freight have fallen sharply. For farmers in the Central River Region whose produce previously had to navigate a ferry queue before reaching markets in Banjul or across the border in Senegal, the change is direct and measurable.

At the port of Banjul and every major border crossing, a digital customs system upgraded with the African Development Bank Group's support has transformed how the government accounts for trade. In 2023, customs revenue rose 23 per cent. By 2024, it exceeded its target by more than 600 per cent. That additional domestic revenue, collected by the government's own systems rather than disbursed by a donor, funded the expansion of the National Social Registry to 258,196 households and agricultural inputs for more than 20,000 smallholder farmers.

In Jarra Madina, in the Lower River Region, the Climate Smart Rural WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) Development Project brought solar-powered clean water to a community where women had walked five kilometres before dawn to fetch water from open century-old wells. When that walk ends, the hours it consumed become available for something else. For farming. For business. For children who can attend school without being held back for water collection.

These three changes - agricultural investment, physical connectivity, and domestic revenue, reinforce each other. A farmer who can get produce to market quickly, whose children are in school and healthy, and whose government can fund its own extension services is a farmer in a fundamentally different position from one who cannot.

Five decades, one direction

The African Development Bank has been active in The Gambia since 1974. In five decades, $843 million has been invested across 96 projects. The early portfolio focused on what a young, largely agrarian country most urgently needed: roads, water, basic agricultural infrastructure. The portfolio evolved along with the country's needs, toward governance, institutional capacity, value chains, and climate resilience.

What has remained constant is the direction. Every significant investment - from the Senegambia Bridge to the customs system, to the rice programmes - has addressed the same underlying question: how does a small, resource-constrained, trade-dependent economy build a productive base for its people? The answers have changed as tools and knowledge have improved. The question has not.

In December 2025, The Gambia's Finance Minister Seedy Keita pledged support for the seventeenth replenishment of the African Development Fund, the same concessional financing window that has underwritten much of The Gambia's development investment since 1974. The country's contribution's significance lies in what it signals: a government that has received concessional support for fifty years choosing to invest in the pool that funds others.

In the rice fields of the Central River Region, the significance of that arc is measured in a harvest that does not depend on the rains alone, in a child who receives a meal that was grown nearby, in a woman who arrives at her field in the morning having slept an extra hour because the water is now at her doorstep. That is what five decades of sustained investment, directed at the right problems, can make possible.

• 67,200 direct and indirect beneficiaries of P2-P2RS across 19 districts
• 120,000 indirect beneficiaries targeted by the REWARD-Gambia rice programme
• $843 Million invested across 96 projects since 1974
• 15,000+ vehicles/day crossing the Senegambia Bridge (from 532 before)
• 39,397 school children are receiving daily meals from locally sourced farm produce