Senegambia, officially the Senegambia Confederation, was a loose confederation
in the late 20th century between the West African countries of Senegal and
its neighbour the Gambia, which is almost completely surrounded by Senegal.
The confederation was founded on 1 February 1982 following an agreement
between the two countries signed on 12 December 1981. It was intended to
promote cooperation between the two countries, but was dissolved by Senegal
on 30 September 1989 after the Gambia refused to move closer toward union.
History As a political unit, Senegambia was
created by dueling French and English colonial forces in the region.
Competition between the French and the English began in the 16th century when
both started to establish trading centers. Although there was some overlap
in their areas of influence, French trade centered on the Senegal River and
in the Cap-Vert region and English trade on the Gambia River. The region became
more important for both growing empires because West Africa allowed a convenient
waystation for trade between Europe and the respective American colonies;
critical to that trade was its provision of slaves for the African Slave Trade.
As colonialism became more lucrative, especially after the development of the
Thirteen Colonies, New France, and sugar plantations in the Caribbean, England
and France took greater measures to define their spheres of influence in
West Africa. From 1500 to 1758, the two powers used their naval power to try to
remove each other from the region. In 1758, during the Seven Years' War based
in Europe, the British captured major French trading bases along the Senegal
River area and formed the first Senegambia as a crown colony. The
unified region collapsed in 1779. With the British occupied by the American
Revolutionary War in North America, the French recaptured Saint Louis and burned
the major British settlement in the Gambia region. The unified region ended
officially in 1783 in the aftermath of the British defeat and independence by
the United States. The Treaty of Versailles created a
balance between France and Britain: Saint Louis, l’île de Gorée, and the
Senegal River region were restored to France, and the Gambia was left to the
British. In the 1860s and 1870s, both nations began to consider a land-trading
proposal to unify the region, with the French trading another West African
holding for the Gambia, but the exchange was never completed. Although the areas
were ruled by separate, competing powers, they did not determine an
official border between the French and British Senegambian colonies until 1889.
At the time, France agreed to accept the current border between the two countries
and remove its border trading posts. This decision resulted in the future
Senegal and the Gambia sharing a large problem: how to successfully maintain
two separate countries in a region with shared yet diverse cultural values, and
one nation virtually surrounded by another.
Problems with Senegambia's border For each country, the lock and key
border situation has posed unique problems for international relations,
especially in trade and control of regions surrounding the Senegal–Gambia
border. One of the greatest problems for both countries 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
lead to a group of sympathizers in the other, bringing danger to the democratic
regimes of both countries. This fear was realized during the 1981
coup attempt to oust President Dawda Jawara of the Gambia. Senegal’s
pro-Western stance increased its security worries since its neighboring
countries might use the Gambia, secessionists in the Casamance region,
or other dissident groups to destabilize the Senegalese government. Specific
threats came from Kwame Nkrumah's Ghana, Moussa Traoré's Mali, Ahmed Sekou
Touré's Guinea, João Bernardo Vieira's Guinea-Bissau, and Muammar al-Qaddafi's
Libya. While the Senegalese government speculated about some dangers, in the
late 1980s it had border skirmishes with Mauritania. After the coup attempt, the
government realized that its military forces were not adequate to stop, or
prevent, political upheaval. Security of the region was becoming more and more
difficult to maintain. Since the end of colonization, the
Senegalese government had maintained trade barriers that provided
preferential treatment for French goods imported into the country, while the
Gambia had virtually no trade barriers. The opposing trade policies fueled a
large black market around the Senegal–Gambia border, which brought
cheaper manufactured goods into Senegal. The black market also attracted an
export drain into the Gambia. The Senegalese government began to institute
a delayed payment system with its groundnut farms. When farmers sold their
harvest to the Senegalese government, they would get a voucher, known as a
chit, which they could turn into cash after a three-month waiting period. Not
wanting to wait for the Senegalese marketing system to pay them, more
farmers began to smuggle their goods to Banjul, where the Gambian government
paid in cash; by 1990, estimates show that 20% of the Gambian groundnut market
was from smuggled Senegalese crops. Birth of the Confederation
In the short term, the Senegambia Confederation was a pragmatic union
based on a mutual security interest. As noted, the Senegalese government feared
national instability caused by uprisings in either the Gambia or the Casamance
region. This fear nearly became reality on 30 July 1981 when Gambian leftists
attempted a coup d'état against President Sir Dawda Jawara. At the
request of President Jawara, the Senegalese army entered the Gambia and
put down the insurrection. The attempted coup resulted in both countries' leaders
promoting the unification ideas which had been developing in the region.
Léopold Sédar Senghor, first President of Senegal, was one of "les trois pères"
of Negritude—a literary and ideologically socialist movement of
pan-Africanism, encouraging Africans throughout the Diaspora to embrace their
shared culture. Senghor’s belief in Negritude informed the possibility of
unification between Senegal and the Gambia, and fostered the belief that
unification would happen as an organic process.
In the 1960s, Senegal and the Gambia had commissioned a United Nations report to
study the possible plans and benefits of unification between the two countries in
the 1960s. The eight-year Senegambia Confederation was one of the
longest-lived African unions of the period.
End of the Confederation Throughout the integration process,
support came primarily from the two governments and their social elites;
neither the Senegalese nor the Gambian people at large were particularly
interested in integration. Once the threat of political instability began to
dissipate, both sides began to move back to their traditional fears and
stereotypes of the other. The Gambian government began to fear losing their
own power and identity through Senegalese engulfment. Hughes and Lewis,
in their Senegambia analysis, list many problems with unions which often lead to
failure, which this union shared. The union had both pragmatic and
ideological elements. Because its was created in response to security
concerns, when that threat was believed finished, the confederation’s momentum
began to die. Senegal unilaterally pulled out its troops from the Gambia
when it was threatened by Mauritania. Gambia felt its interests were not being
protected. The main platform on which union had been built was also the
element on which it foundered. The end came on 23 August 1989, when President
Diouf decided it was best that the confederation be placed aside after
fruitless talks about a customs union. References