Senegambia Confederation

  Senegal

  The Gambia

Senegambia was a loose confederation between the West African country of Senegal and its neighbor the Gambia, which is almost completely surrounded by Senegal, except for an outlet to the sea. The confederation came into existence on 1 February 1982 following an agreement between the two countries signed on 12 December 1981. The federation was intended to promote cooperation between the two countries, but was dissolved by Senegal on 30 September 1989 when the Gambia refused to move closer toward union.

Senegambia: A Historical Perspective

Senegambia was created by dueling French and English colonial forces in the region. Competition in this region begins between the French and the English in this region in the 1500s when both begin to establish trading centers in the region – with French centered in the Senegal River and Cape Verde region and the English on the Gambia (although they was some overlapped in area of influence) (Richmond 176). This region becomes more important for both growing empires because West Africa allowed for a convenient way station for trade between Europe at their American colonies and a warehouse for the African Slave Trade. As colonialism becomes more and more lucrative, both France and England take greater measures to define their sphere of influence. From the 1500 to 1758, the two powers used their naval power to try to remove other from the region; and in 1758, the British were successfully in major French trading bases in the Senegal River area and formed the first Senegambia – a crown colony (Richmond 176). The unified region changed in 1779 when the French recaptured Saint Louis and burned the major British settlement in the Gambia region; these return to the France led to the end of the unified region in 1783 (Richmond 176).

The Treaty of Versailles of 1783 (signed along with the Treaty of Paris that officially ended the American Revolution) gave us the current Francophone-Anglophone balance in the region: Saint Louis, l’île de Gorée, and the Senegal River region are restored to France and the Gambia left to the British (Richmond 176). In the 1860s and 70s both nations began to consider land trading proposal to unify the region, with French trading another West African holding for The Gambia; however the exchange was never completed (Richmond 177). While the areas where in separate, competing hands, there was yet an official border between the French and British Senegambian colonies until 1889 when the French agreed to accept the current border between the two countries and remove its border trading posts (Richmond 177). This choice left what would become in Sénégal (gained its independence in 1960) and The Gambia (became independent in 1970) with a large problem: how to have successfully maintain two separate countries in a region with shared yet diverse cultural values and international border which wedges one country into the middle of the other.

Problems with Sénégambia border

For each country the lock and key border situation provides unique problems for international relations, especially in trade and control of regions surrounding the Sénégal-Gambia border. For both countries one of the greatest problems is the ease with which violence could spread through the region. With shared ethnic communities on both sides of the border, a successful coup in one country could led to a group of sympathizers in the other, bringing danger to democratic regimes of both countries. This fear was made reality by the 1981 coup attempt to oust Present Jawara of The Gambia (Richmond 182). Sénégal’s pro-Western stance also made its security worries greater for fear that neighboring countries might use either The Gambia, secessionist in the Casamance region (the region of Sénégal south of The Gambian border), or other dissident groups to destabilize the Dakar government, especially fearing threats from Nkrumaist Ghana, Mali, Sékou Touré’s Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, and Libya (Hughes and Lewis 230). While some of this worry was speculation on the part of the Dakar government, Sénégal would later (towards the end of the Senegambia Confederation) have borders skirmish with Mauritania (Hughes and Lewis 239). After the coup attempt, The Gambian government was also the government’s military forces where not adequate to stop, or prevent, political upheaval. Security of the region was becoming more and more difficult to secure.

Sénégal was taking a special hit economically from The Gambia through differences in international trade policy. Since the colonization’s end, the Senegalese government has maintained trade barriers which provided for preferential treatment for French goods imported into the country while The Gambia has virtually no trade barriers. The opposing trade policies fueled a large black market around the Sénégal-Gambia border for cheaper manufactured goods into Sénégal (Richmond 185). However, the black market is also causing an export drain into The Gambia, as well. The Senegalese government began to institute a delayed payment system with its groundnut (peanut) farms. When farmers sold their harvest to Dakar, they would get a voucher, known as a chit, which they could turn into cash after a three month waiting period (Richmond 186). Not wanting to what for Senegalese marketing system to pay them, a larger number of farmers began to smuggle their goods to Banjul, where the Gambian government paid in case; by 1990, estimates show that 20% of Gambian groundnut market was from smuggled Senegalese crops (Richmond 185-6).

Birth of Senegambia Confederation

In the short term the Senegambia Confederation was a pragmatic union based on mutual security interest. As has been previously mentioned, the Senegalese government had a fear of national instability caused by uprising in either The Gambia or Casamance region. This fear nearly became reality on July 30, 1981 when Gambian leftist attempted a coup d’état against President Dawda K. Jawara. At the request of President Jawara the Senegalese army entered Gambian and successfully put down the insurrection (Hughes and Lewis 228; Richmond 182). However, this new possibility of forced regime change, so close to home for both Banjul and Dakar, promoted the unification ideas which had developing in the region. Léopold Sédar Senghor, first President of Sénégal, was one of les trois pères (the three fathers) of Negritude – a literary and ideologically Marxist movement which encourage Africans throughout the Diaspora to embrace their shared culture (Lawless paragraph 1-2). Senghor’s belief in Negritude not only informed a sense of the possibility of unification between Sénégal and The Gambia, but it seems to have believed that it would happen as an organic process (Hughes and Lewis 234). In the vein Sénégal and The Gambia commissioned a UN report to study the possible plans and benefits of unification between the two countries in the 1960s (Hughes and Lewis 229; Richmond 178). Despite the short-lived union, the Senegambia Confederation was one the longest lived African unions of the period. Had it succeed, it would not only have solved economic tensions between the neighboring countries but give new hope to the concept of Pan-Africanism.

End of the Confederation

Throughout the integration process support came out from two governments and social elites; neither the Senegalese nor the Gambian public was really interested integration (Hughes and Lewis 236). Once the threat of political instability began to assuage, both sides began to move back to their traditional fears and stereotypes of the other. The Gambian government (and the Gambian people), once the coup began to seem like simply a historical fact, began to fear losing their own power and identity through Senegalese engulfment(Hughes and Lewis 236). Hughes and Lewis, in their Senegambia analysis, list many problems with unions which often lead to failure which this union shared (239). In this context, one of the most salient is pragmatic vs. ideological foundation for union. Since the union was forged because of mutual security concerns, the Confederation’s momentum began to die once people at all levels of both Senegalese and Gambia government began to move back and move on. This situation is best exemplified the unilateral removal of Senegalese troops from The Gambia once Senegal was threatened by Mauritania (see Sandwich Sovereignties above; Hughes and Lewis 239). The main platform on which union had been forged marked the beginning of the end. The official end came August 23, 1989, when President Diouf decided it was best the Confederation be placed aside after fruitless talks on a custom union (Hughes and Lewis 239).

References

• Hughes, Arnold and Lewis, Janet. “Beyond Francophonie? The Senegambia Confederation in Retrospect.” State and Society in Francophone Africa since Independence. Ed. Anthony Kirk-Greene and Daniel Bach. Oxford, England: St. Martin's Press, 1995. 228-243.6

• Lawless, Laura K. “Negritude – La Négritude: Introduction to the Francophone literary movement known as la Négritude.” French Language at About.com. About.com. 25 January 2006. < http://french.about.com/library/bl-negritude.htm>.

• Richmond, Edmun B. “Senegambia and the Confederation: History, Expectations, and Disillusions.” Journal of Third World Studies. 10.2 (1993): 172-194.