The Jinack Tragedy: When a Government Fails Its Youth

By Madi Jobarteh

We just heard Pres. Adama Barrow address the nation about the tragic boat accident off Jinack. Listening to him confirms once again that the President has neither clue nor commitment to the youth of this country. Not only has his government failed to stop the Backway tragedy but in his entire speech, he has only one generic sentence about how he will support the youth in order address this national calamity.

“More importantly, we remain strongly determined to create safer and more dignified opportunities for our young people through development initiatives, jobs, and other livelihood options at home.”

This is a meaningless, insensitive, and above all a statement of guilt and failure that was forced on him, but he does not mean it. Worse, the facts overwhelmingly contradict it.

In March 2024, the government announced a circular migration agreement with Spain, presented as a “legal alternative” to irregular migration and offering Gambians work. According to the then Minister of Trade, Baboucarr Joof, the pilot program was to send 350 Gambians for three-month agricultural work. In June 2025, 39 men finally departed. By September three months later, six returned. Thirty-three absconded.

Similarly, in 2023 the government signed a labour agreement with Saudi Arabia to send Gambian women as domestic workers. The first batch of 59 women left in February 2025 amid assurances that their rights and dignity would be protected. By June, six had returned, while many others are struggling to escape widespread abuse and exploitation.

Meanwhile, thousands of Gambian youths continue to risk and lose their lives on the Backway. This raises a fundamental question: does this government have any idea how to generate youth employment and development? How can exporting able-bodied young Gambians as farm labourers and housemaids be presented as a youth employment policy?

These shameful bilateral migration arrangements do not reflect innovation or commitment. Rather they reflect desperation, policy bankruptcy, and a lack of ideas. Government’s own data confirms this failure: 41 percent of Gambian youth are not in employment, education, or training. This is an indictment of both policy design and political will.

The budgetary evidence is even more revealing. Presenting the 2026 budget before lawmakers, the Minister of Finance disclosed that the Ministry of Youth and Sports received D146.5 million, including subventions supplemented by a sport levy, pool betting revenue, and scholarships. In a country where 70 percent of the population is under 30, this allocation is not just inadequate, it is irresponsible.

A serious government would have invested massively in youth-focused institutions. The National Youth Service Scheme should have been expanded nationwide. The National Youth Council, NEDI, PIA, NSC, and similar institutions should have been resourced to scale up. Universities and TVET centres should have been expanded, equipped, and made affordable. Youth entrepreneurship should have been backed by accessible financing, low interest credit, and market support.

Instead, what do we see? A country where access to credit, skills training, education, and markets is either too limited or too expensive for most young people. In Senegal, university students receive monthly stipends. In The Gambia, students at Gambia College once enjoyed stipends and free entry, but today both have now been abolished. Today, students must fend for themselves, while university fees remain beyond the reach of many, and TVET centres remain few and overstretched.

With 70% of the population below 30, it is obvious that the engine of growth for this country is its youth. Any serious government with ideas would have seen the profitability of investing heavily in sectors and institutions that would make the youth develop and grow. In every sector of this country and its economy one will find young people struggling to initiate, create, develop, and do something for themselves. Yet they have been shackled by none other than government failure to support and empower their ideas, initiatives, talent, and knowledge.

For example, in the music and creative industry alone, there is no state-sponsored national theatre, performing arts institute, recording studio, or state-supported talent development framework such as a music school, museum or national competition.

It is therefore tragic but not surprising that another boat disaster has occurred, and the President could only offer a hollow, tasteless promise about “creating opportunities at home.” For a country whose future rests squarely on its youth, this failure is unforgivable.

For The Gambia, Our Homeland.