Rough waves of the Atlantic clapped against the pristine beaches of Tujereng, a coastal town in The Gambia, an hour’s drive from the capital Banjul. Large craters dotted the once-thriving lands, where heavy machinery, barely 30 meters from the shoreline, stripped away vital topsoil. Fallen trees, uprooted during mining operations, lie as silent witnesses to the destruction of local biodiversity.
Fertile grounds have turned into barren, desert-like expanses, incapable of supporting agriculture or wildlife. Along the coast, the unchecked removal of sand dunes—natural barriers between communities and the ocean—as private companies hunt for mineral sand for export to China has intensified coastal erosion, accelerating vulnerability to sea level rise.
“This entire area was a thick forest before mining started in the area. The trees were all removed,” said Yankuba Sonko, an employee at a nearby restaurant whose backyard has been completely destroyed by mining.
The mining sites in the coastal communities are either right along the shoreline of the Atlantic Ocean or a few kilometers away in areas used by women for gardening and rice cultivation. On site, GACH Mining Company mounts a giant machine which—in its wake—creates large craters, sorting white and black sand rich in ilmenite, zircon, rutile, silica and quartz.
Repeated studies have shown that mining, which is either done on agricultural lands or the beaches, affects both the tourism industry and women subsistence farmers (described locally as gardeners) whose rice fields and vegetable farms continue to be destroyed. “The mine has had a greater impact on women than men. At household level, the mine has cost between 50 and 70% of household income, representing up to D10,000 per month,” said an EU–funded study conducted in May 2024. The study was part of a project implemented by Gambia’s environmental watchdog, the National Environmental Agency (NEA), whose job should have been holding GACH accountable.
The story of Tujereng is one of many. Coastline communities—Kartong, Batokunku, Brufut and Sanyang—all face similar environmental devastation due to decades of mining of both mineral sand and construction sand. Sanyang lies 9 minutes drive from Tujereng. The first site GACH mined in the coastal community is in an area called Banko. The area now lies dry and barren, with the company’s operations having displaced a lot of women farmers. The Banko area lies between two mining sites, both of which left large craters that turned into streams during the rainy season. One is a mining for construction sand being carried out by a company called GINKON, owned by Kebba Madi Bojang and Momodou Bojang—both politicians affiliated with President Adama Barrow’s ruling National People’s Party (NPP). Momodou is the former councillor for Sanyang ward and Kebba is the party’s National Youth President. In the 2022 parliamentary elections, Momodou was NPP’s candidate for Kombo South.
Banko is not the only area affected by mining in Sanyang. Amie Jabang, a subsistence farmer in an area called Sansanding, has her farm in an area mined by GACH. Jabang is a breadwinner for her family. But as the NEA’s own study found in 2024, her income has dropped significantly due to the impact of mining on their agricultural lands.
“This garden means everything to us. This is how we fund our children’s school fees and take care of our families. The mining has destroyed a lot of gardens. They have ruined all the roads leading to our gardens. During the rainy season, this road is filled with stagnant water. You cannot even walk to access your garden. It becomes flooded. A lot of animals like snakes and crocodiles migrate from the sea to our gardens, destroying our rice fields,” Amie Jabang told The Republic.
When contacted for comments, GACH said it is aware its mining has affected women farmers, but added that it has “provided compensation equivalent [to] and above their expected loss”. “Our (mining) activity has been carried out in a responsible manner with every effort to mitigate damage to the environment,” the company said. Activists and community members in Sanyang and Tujereng, however, denied any knowledge of compensation to the farmers.
Contract awarded “based on favouritism”
Gambia’s mining sector suffered abuse during the regime of former president Yahya Jammeh. A state inquiry revealed that Jammeh stole revenue from the sector while paying zero tax on looted income. He either awarded contracts to a company of his choosing or his own, such as in the case of Alhamdulillah Mining Company.
Though Barrow, who became president in January 2017, came on the promise of reforms. In October 2017, his government awarded a mining license to GACH Mining, a little-known company created only three months earlier, without any public tender. GACH’s de facto owner, Abubakary Jawara, has deep ties with the President and his National People’s Party.
Not only was GACH mining only three months old when it was awarded the contract, but neither the company nor its owner had been involved in any mining operations before. The actual work on site is done by Chinese expats. On September 27, 2022, some changes were made in the ownership structure as two Chinese men were added—Zheng Chang with 34% shares and Tan Chaochong with 15%. This slashed the share of Surahata Jawara, who is believed to be Abubakary’s son, from 95% to 51%. Abubakary Jagana, who previously owned 5%, apparently sold his shares.
The 45–year–old Jawara is a Gambian businessman who has risen to prominence following the change of government in 2017. In 2024, Jawara was conferred a Gambian of the Year award by The Standard newspaper. When contacted for comments, GACH told The Republic that when it acquired the license in October 2017, its CEO, Abubakary Jawara, had no relationship with the president or its political party, which was formed in December 2019.
Contrary to this claim, the relationship between the Gambian leader and GACH’s CEO started in 2017, even before his company was issued a license. In August 2017, about two months before GACH was issued a mining license, Jawara was appointed by the President as an Honorary Consul General of Gambia to Guangzhou, China. According to his appointment letter dated August 23, 2017, his task was to promote and protect the country’s interest in China. Barely a week before his appointment and about 2 months before his company got the mining license, the Gambian leader told the Fatu Network (26:00) the awarding of the mining contract followed all due processes. He, however, added that he forgot the name of the ‘Gambian company’ that was issued the license.
In their 2018 audit, the National Audit Office found that contrary to the President’s claims, the awarding of the mining contract to GACH did not follow due process. The country’s supreme audit body said the contract was single-sourced without the approval of the Gambia Public Procurement Authority.
“Discussion with officials at the Geology Department revealed that Gach mining company has been issued a license to begin mining black sand at the Kartong, Sanyang and Batokunku beaches,” said auditors in the 2018 audit of government accounts published in 2021.
“We noted with concern that the said license was issued without subjecting it to tender. There is a high risk that the license was awarded based on favouritism.”
Environmental watchdogs look the other way
The mining for heavy mineral concentrates is done by wet sieving a large area of stream sediment, sorting minerals from white sand. The machines, as they roar, leave large craters in their wake. Trees are felled. Agricultural land and the ecology of the coastal communities are destroyed.
The cries from the communities were always ignored. In 2015, 33 people from the coastal village of Kartong were remanded at the Mile II Central Prisons for protesting against black sand mining in their community. The charges against them were later dropped by former president Yahya Jammeh.
Across The Gambia’s coastal communities—Kartong, Tujereng, Sanyang or Batokunku—the hunt for mineral sand has left devastating environmental impacts. “Do you see the buffer between the shoreline and the sea? That is less than 15 metres… They have cut all the trees. All the baobab trees there are gone, and no one has held them accountable,” observed Lamin Sonko, an environmental activist and member of the environment committee of the Village Development Committee in Tujereng.
After his shocking election defeat, President Barrow commenced an inquiry into the financial transactions of Jammeh. It found the devastating impact of unregulated mining whose operations, though benefiting the former dictator and his associates, had no positive impact on the communities.
“What is clear, though, is that the environmentalists, as well as the villagers who lost their lands without compensation, agreed on the serious damage caused by the mining. There was no evidence that mining brought any benefit to the communities,” said the Commission in its final report. “We noticed the ugly craters left there by the mining operators without caring about rehabilitating them as promised prior to commencement of operations.”
With barely three months into the inquiry, the new administration took on the old ways of the old administration, mining with little adherence to the environmental laws.
The records received by The Republic through an Access to Information request show that throughout its operation in Sanyang, GACH obtained a provisional environmental approval license for 2 months—January to March 2021—in violation of environmental laws. In 2020, and for that time only, the company was issued a stop notice by the NEA. The company had no environmental approval certificate for its operation in Brufut either.
The records obtained from the NEA also show GACH’s license for Tujereng and Batokunku expired on January 10, 2024, although their operation continued in these areas. GACH confirmed this but argued that one environmental approval should be sufficient for mining operations on “the coastal zone with similar environments and impacts”. Section 22 of Gambia’s NEMA Act and section 4 of the Environmental Impact Assessment Regulation 2014 requires a mandatory environmental approval for every location where mining activity is due to be carried out, said Omar Malmo Jr., a Gambian EIA specialist. “Even if there exists ecological, sociological and economic homogeneity between two sites, they cannot use the same EIA study for the two, even if the sites are within the same village,” he said. “Each site or project must conduct its own EIA and it must involve the society that is within. So, there cannot be total homogeneity. An EIA document for a project in Sanyang (specified location and size) cannot be used as the EIA for a project in Gunjur even if the project is the same.”
The company also received an environmental approval for its operations in Tujereng before it filed its assessment with the NEA. GACH’s EIA report for Tujereng is dated January 2024, but NEA issued an environmental approval license to the company in January 2023.
In 2020, GACH claimed to have been working on a proposal to turn the mined zones into a ‘large-scale tomato farm’, and provide “free seeds and fertiliser to the farmers”. They also proposed converting “depressed areas into fish farms to guarantee the supply of fish to the communities”. These promises remain unfulfilled.
When contacted for comment, GACH said it has paid D1.2m ($16,800) to the Department of Parks and Wildlife to plant 1500 trees in the mining area in Brufut. “We have also rehabilitated the former mine site in Batokunku and launched a coconut tree planting exercise in that area in association with the VDC and Youth Groups,” said the company.
Old ways are the new pathways
There is little transparency over mining operations in The Gambia. Neither the contracts nor the revenue from it is publicly available, even upon an ATI request. After 70 days of waiting, a request and subsequent filing of a complaint before the ATI Commission over the refusal of the Ministry of Energy and Mines and the Geology Department to provide a statement of the mining account, contract with the company and its audited accounts yielded no reply.
In 2020, a former energy minister, Fafa Sanyang, told journalists that the government has a 60% share in the net profit of the mining operations. But not only are the records kept from the public and the journalists, it appears they are kept from the government, too, calling into question how they determine their 60% share of net profits. In 2019, the Auditor General said the government was solely relying on GACH to verify the number of shipments made.
“There is a risk that the proportion of revenue remitted to the government of the Gambia is understated since no control is in place to monitor or confirm shipment,” said the auditors. Our request for the company’s audited accounts and its export records from the Ministry of Energy and Mines, Geology Department, and GACH—using the ATI— also went unanswered 70 days on despite a complaint filed before the Commission. There has been a one–time declaration in the budget in 2022 when D154.8m ($2.1m) was recorded as proceeds from mineral mining.
The records obtained by The Republic from the Gambia Ports Authority and Gambia Revenue Authority show that GACH exported about 4,417 containers of mineral sand between 2017 and 2024, an estimated 119,285 tons of mineral sand.
Former minister Sanyang told lawmakers in March 2019 that a ton of black sand was being sold at $150, though a former director of the mining company, Alhagie Sillah, said they were selling a ton at $200. The value of raw mineral declared to tax authorities, however, places the cost per ton at D1,953 ($26). The Republic estimates the total revenue at $23.9 million (D1,720,909,304) with a ton at $200 or $17.9 million (D1,290,312,012) at $150—all amounts many folds higher than the revenue the government has ever declared as revenue from mining.
“There’s very little transparency when it comes to revenues collected by government agencies…,” said economist Lamin Dibba, the executive director of the Center for Budget and Macroeconomic Transparency.
“This story was supported by Code for Africa, and funded by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ).”
