Senegal & The Gambia Began working together
(Part 2) This is a continuation from the last edition. We stopped at the Darsilami incident and the efforts the former government took to address the issue, including the establishment of a Border Committee by the former government following the two border exercises in order to determine the Senegal-Gambia border. Kolley was part of the Border Committee that prepared a national paper and began engaging Senegal. Below is the continuation.
The relationship between the two countries eventually moved from the military confrontation to technical discussions after President Macky Sall assumed office. Former Minister of Local Government and Lands, who at the time was the Director of Physical Planning, Momodou F. Kolley, who spearheaded the border survey exercise, said the Gambian newly established border committee at the time came up with a document regarded as a national paper. During the presidency of Macky Sall, Senegal invited the Gambian government to a meeting. The Gambian Border Committee formed part of the delegation with the idea of making the matter of the border part of the issues to be discussed by the Governments. The Gambian delegation travelled to Senegal. But the Senegalese Border Committee did not attend the meeting.
"The Senegalese Border Committee did not come. We were there to make a presentation and also hear from the Senegalese Border Committee," Kolley said.
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The Gambian delegation was informed that Senegal's border committee was engaged in a meeting with another country. Before leaving Senegal, the Gambian side requested that a new date be fixed and that the next meeting be held in The Gambia.
Kolley said the Gambian committee wanted the border issue to be formally placed on the agenda. The Senegalese agreed and it was mentioned as an agenda item. A new date was fixed for the meeting and it was to be held in The Gambia. The meeting was later held at the Atlantic Hotel in Banjul. Both sides made presentations.
Among the Senegalese participants was Sering Mbye Thiam, a veteran surveyor who had served as the first director of surveys in Senegal. Kolley said Thiam was about 80 years old at the time.
He also said that Thiam had participated in the 1972 border dispute in the Sabi-Vélingara area in the Upper River Region. As the meeting developed into what Kolley described as "push and pull", he suggested that Thiam should be allowed to speak as someone who has experience over the border matter and a living witness, who attended previous borders between the two countries. Kolley described Thiam's presence as important.
Kolley said he was the person who identified Thiam in the gathering. He recalled Thiam's name during his research in the Sabi area border dispute and this was why he felt that Thiam was an important figure fitting to speak in that meeting. Thiam was at the time a retired worker, but was always used by the Senegalese as a backup for advice and guidance.
"Thiam confirmed the presentation made by The Gambia; that the Gambian presentation was right," Kolley said.
He said the Senegalese side did not have enough material to answer all of the points raised by The Gambia. The two sides therefore agreed to leave the conference room and physically inspect the disputed boundary.
"The Senegalese side did not have enough materials to present and we decided that since that was the case, we should go physically to the site [border] to see," he said.
The joint team comprising the two countries travelled to the Alahin Bolong boundary peg between Siffoe and Darsilami. They walked along the edge of the stream. The route connected to Darsilami and Tranquil. The team also visited the Dimbaya village. Information was collected from the ground. The pegs were identified. One of the things done was that the meeting was held at Darsilami under a tree. The first phase ended there.
The two sides agreed that both countries should return and be better prepared for a more extensive technical meeting, which was scheduled to take place in Casamance. The next major meeting was held at Hotel Kadiandoumagne in Ziguinchor. The meeting lasted about a week. Kolley said the Senegalese delegation did not come with surveyors. Instead, Senegal brought geographers.
The Gambian delegation did not accept the Senegalese presentation as sufficient for the technical exercise. The Gambian team made its own presentation. Kolley said the Senegalese side accepted the Gambian presentation, as it had done at the Atlantic Hotel. A subsequent meeting was held in Dakar. According to Kolley, the Gambian presentation was accepted and endorsed there as well. The process then moved towards a joint technical mechanism. Senegal subsequently linked The Gambia with the African Union on the border issue. The AU provided The Gambia with equipment to support the technical work. Kolley said this included printers, at least four vehicles, including Land cruisers, truck and pickup, and other survey equipment.
A technical team was established. The Senegalo-Gambia Secretariat was revived to resolve disputes. The technical team was assigned to identify the tampered pegs and prepare its findings, including making recommendations for new pegs to be placed between the existing pegs so as to reduce the distance. But Kolley said the process was not completed. He was eventually relieved of his duties by former President Jammeh.
"During our visit, it was noted that the pegs were tampered with, and a technical team comprising the two countries was established and were marked to be adjusted and return the pegs to their original place. Work commenced, but I don't know about the rest because I was relieved of my duties," he said.
The history described by Kolley has gained renewed significance following the latest incidents along the border. On 16 July 2026, Senegalese Armed Forces personnel were involved in the demolition of part of the perimeter fence of a Gambia Armed Forces installation at Bulock in the West Coast Region.
The Gambian government said the fence was demolished without prior consultation through the bilateral military and diplomatic mechanisms that govern relations between the two countries. It also said Gambian troops at the site acted with restraint and prevented the incident from escalating.
The government said formal diplomatic engagement with Senegal was under way and called for future border concerns to be addressed through the Joint Military Committee and other bilateral channels.
Senegal, in its response, said the area had been under discussion between the two countries for years. Dakar said it had repeatedly drawn Banjul's attention to what it considered encroachments affecting Senegal's territorial integrity.
Senegal also said previous discussions had not produced a clear commitment to permanently resolve the outstanding border questions. The Senegalese government nevertheless said the incident should not be interpreted as an attempt to undermine The Gambia's sovereignty and maintained that it remained committed to dialogue.
The Bulock incident was significant because the area had already been identified as a border problem. The Gambian National Assembly had previously examined conditions at the Darsilami military post and highlighted the need for a perimeter fence. The broader border management problem was therefore already known to Gambian authorities before the July incident.
The military confrontation was followed by reports involving Gambian farmers. On 18 July, reports emerged that Senegalese gendarmerie officers had entered the Jimbala Kerr Musa area in Lower Saloum and ordered farmers to stop cultivating lands that residents said their families had farmed for generations. Similar reports emerged from Panchang and other border communities. The issue later reached Jahanka, where residents reported that Senegalese soldiers had arrived with military vehicles and ordered farmers to stop working on fields they considered Gambian land. The incidents created anxiety as the farmers are in the rainy-season farming period.
Some farmers abandoned fields because they feared arrest, military operations or losing access to land after investing in seeds and labour. The Gambian government's position has been more cautious.
Defence Minister Baboucarr Joof described the border issue as complex and said the two countries already had a joint commission working on demarcation.
He said some Gambians have farms inside Senegalese territory and some Senegalese have farms inside The Gambia because communities had cultivated land across the area for centuries, before modern international boundaries were established.
Joof said land-tenure rights would have to be addressed after demarcation, delineation and densification of the border.
He urged restraint while the technical process continued.
The government has also said that, in some of the recent cases, affected farmers were cultivating land that technical assessments placed inside Senegalese territory.
That position illustrates the central problem at the heart of the dispute. Communities may regard land as Gambian because their families have farmed it for generations. Governments, however, must rely on legal boundaries and technical surveys. Where those two realities do not match, local farming disputes can quickly become national sovereignty disputes.
The latest crisis is also not the first recent confrontation around Darsilami and Tranquil. In 2023, tensions in the area led Gambian and Senegalese officials to meet with local communities. The two governments subsequently agreed on measures intended to prevent further confrontation. The arrangements included returning Gambian and Senegalese soldiers to positions they occupied before 2016, joint patrols of a buffer zone and renewed work by the Joint Boundary Commission. The purpose was to prevent either side from unilaterally changing the situation on the ground while the boundary was being properly demarcated. Joint patrols were later conducted along several border communities.
The two countries also continued sensitisation and technical activities. The Joint Senegalo-Gambian Boundary Management Commission conducted community sensitisation exercises in 2024 and 2025, including in areas such as Jimbala, Panchang, Bulock and Darsilameh. But the underlying boundary question remained.
For Kolley, the border is not an abstract line. It is a chain of physical pegs extending through communities, wetlands, farms and forests.
He identified pegs around Ala Kunda near Kanilai, Kiang Sandeng, areas before Senoba in Jarra, Jarra Sukuta, Suma Kunda in the Upper River Region and Kaolong in the Central River Region. He also mentioned a peg at the Galleh Manda area in the Central River Region extending towards Casamance. There is, he said, a peg at Sabi where he said tampering was discovered as per a report in the archives, which brought about the 1972 crisis. From Sabi, the line crosses wetland towards villages and reaches a peg at Sare Pirasu. He identified pegs at Amdalai and in some areas of Niumi. In Upper Badibou, he referred to Biran Kunda, near the Senegalese village of Kerr Musa, as well as a peg at Kerr Ayib. He said a peg in the northern part of the Central River Region had also been tampered with and that the problem affected Jimbala and other villages. He also referred to Panchang in Nianija, areas around Pachonki and Lebato in Sami, and a peg near Sara Bojo.
These pegs, he said, were supposed to provide the physical reference for the international boundary. Kolley said the colonial boundary divided communities that had lived together for generations.
"We are very close. We have families living there. The colonialists divided them," he said.
He cited Gambissara and Lamoi, where he said the two alkalos were cousins during his time. The family connection remained despite the international boundary. He said the graveyard is in Lamoi, on the Senegalese side while both Gambisara and Lamoi used that cemetery. At Mbye Kunda and Sare Bakary, also known as Bolli Banna, the boundary passes through a football field. One part is in The Gambia. The other is in Senegal.
At Amdalai, Kolley said the borderline passes through a small mosque, leaving one side in The Gambia and the other in Senegal. In Kang Sambou in Foni, he described a house that stands in The Gambia while the last peg of the veranda is on the boundary peg.
The examples show how the boundary has interacted with communities that existed before the modern state line was drawn. Kolley said the problem was made worse by the failure to maintain the physical boundary. He said his research revealed to him that during the First Republic funds were allocated to regional governors to paint the border pegs white after every rainy season. The funds were held at the Ministry of Local Government and then distributed to commissioners, now known as governors. The practice later stopped.
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Villages also had a tradition of clearing their surroundings at the end of every rainy season.
"Every village will clear up to a certain point and stop, which shows their boundaries," he said.
According to Kolley, that practice served three purposes. It helped villagers identify the extent of their land. It reduced the risk of bushfires. And it made boundary pegs visible and easier to identify. When the practice stopped, the boundary became harder to see.
"Failure to maintain this has led to the uncontrolled problems among villages for boundaries," he said.
Kolley also identified another problem: the absence of comprehensive village boundary maps.
"There are no specific village boundary maps available in The Gambia. If it is there, it is not to my knowledge and I have not seen them during my research," he said.
He said the absence of clear village maps had contributed to disputes between communities.
"That is why villages are encroaching into each other's land because land has become money," he said.
The latest incidents at the border have therefore returned the border dispute to the centre of national attention. The fence at Bullock has been demolished. Farmers in several communities have been told to stop cultivating disputed fields, though the two countries have agreed to allow them to return to their farms. For Kolley the history of the border shows that the two countries have repeatedly reached agreements but failed to fully implement them. The result is that a problem that began with colonial maps and boundary pegs can today involve soldiers, military camps, farmers and entire villages.
"We are one family. We are the same people. There is no need for dispute. We need to discuss and resolve our border issues," he said.
Kolley said the answer is not confrontation. His position is that the two countries must return to the technical evidence and complete the work. The 1889 map, the surviving boundary pegs, historical reports, archival records and the findings of previous joint committees should all be brought together. The disputed areas should be surveyed jointly. Tampered or displaced pegs should be restored through agreement. The gaps between pegs should be addressed. The border should be maintained. And the rights of people who have lived and farmed in the affected areas should be considered as part of the settlement.
And Kolley's account shows how far back the problem goes. The pegs are still there in parts of the bush. The villages are still there. The families are still there. The maps and old reports remain. What remains unfinished is the work of bringing all those pieces together and establishing, jointly and conclusively, the line that separates the two countries.
