Introduction - UNDP The Gambia

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Table 1: Poverty in The Gambia
Food poverty line
Overall poverty line
Year Banjul Urban Rural Banjul Urban Rural
1989 - 33% 44% - 64% 76%
1998 21% 42% 71% 54% 62% 80%
Source: The Gambia, Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper
In September 2002, the Strategy for Poverty
Alleviation II (SPA II) was approved at a donors’
roundtable conference and US$118 million was
pledged by development partners to support five
key pillars of the programme for the period 2003
to 2005. These pillars are:
• Improving the enabling policy environment to
promote economic growth and poverty
reduction
• Enhancing the productive capacity and social
protection of the poor and the vulnerable
• Improving the coverage of the unmet basic
needs of the poor
• Building the capacity for local people-centred
development through decentralisation
• Mainstreaming gender equity, environmental
issues, nutrition, governance and HIV/AIDS
awareness into all development programmes.
Progress in the achievement of the objectives of
SPA II and in the implementation of the five
pillars has been very slow and the root causes
Table 2: The relation between Vision 2020 and SPA II
revolve around the following:
• weak institutional capacity
• over-estimation of the implementation
capacity of the sectoral agencies
• inadequate reflection of PRSP priorities in the
national budget
• capacity gaps at policy, sector and local
government area levels due to the inadequacy
of skills, weak systems and processes and the
high attrition rate in the civil service
• slow pace of implementation of the
decentralisation and local government reform
process, lack of broad-based stakeholder
participation in the implementation and
monitoring of SPA II.
These bottlenecks constitute the main capacity
challenges facing the Gambian public service as
far as the implementation of the PRSP is
concerned. The PRSP pillars correspond closely
to the strategic development areas of Vision
2020(See Table 2).
Vision 2020 strategic development areas
Accelerate private sector development
Restructuring economic management
Develop the human capital base
Institutionalise decentralised and democratic
participatory government structures,
processes and systems
SPA II pillars
Create the enabling policy environment for economic growth and
poverty reduction.
Enhance the productive capacity and social protection of the poor
and vulnerable
Improve coverage of the basic social needs of the poor and
vulnerable
Build the capacity of local communities and civil society
organisations to play an active role in the development process
Mainstream poverty-related cross-cutting issues, such as gender,
environment, HIV/AIDS, nutrition, population, and governance
int o the PRSP
Source: Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper/SPA II 2002
The Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs): In September 2000, at the UN
Millennium Summit, held in New York,
world leaders agreed to a set of time-bound
and measurable goals and targets for
combating poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy,
environmental degradation and discrimination
against women.
In 2002, leaders from both the developed and
developing countries reached an agreement
on their various roles towards the
implementation of the MDGs.
Table 3 shows the eight general and The
Gambia’s specific MDGs and the progress in
implementation achieved up to date. The
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Building Capacity for the Attainment of the Millennium Development Goals in The Gambia National Human Development Report 2005
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