Gambia

Gambia refers to an African river as well as to the country that took its name from one of West Africa's important waterways. Surrounded on three sides by French-speaking Senegal, The Gambia's political borders enclose the lower half of a river that begins in the highlands of Guinea and cuts a swath through the country before emptying into the Atlantic. About the size of Connecticut, The Gambia is one of Africa's smallest nations. It is just 15 to 30 miles (24 to 48 kilometers) wide and less than 300 miles (483 kilometers) long. In this Lilliputian political entity, one is never far from the Gambia River, its most outstanding geographical feature.

Nearly 50 years before Columbus crossed the Atlantic, Portuguese sailors entered the Gambia River, making it part of the expanding Atlantic economy. For more than three centuries, slavers from diverse European nations operated along the Gambia River. The Portuguese, Dutch, French, British, and even a Baltic principality (Kurland) established trading posts to facilitate the slave trafficking. After the Atlantic slave trade ceased in the early 19th century, European nations took their spheres of interest and divided Africa into colonies. The Gambia became British in 1889; it achieved political independence in 1965.

More than 1.25 million people currently live in The Gambia (2004 estimate). About one-third of the population reside near the 36-mile (58-kilometer) coastal strip along the Atlantic. Three main ethnic groups comprise the country's population: the Mandinka (40 percent), the Fulani (19 percent), and the Wolof (15 percent). One of Africa' poorest countries, in a continent known for some of the most impoverished nations on the earth, most Gambians make their living from agriculture. The country's preeminent farmers are the Mandinka, and the environments shaped by the Gambia River profoundly influence the way they farm and the crops they grow. The river, its tributaries, and associated wetlands cover about one-quarter of the land surface; a slightly larger percentage comprises the plateau, where agricultural production takes place only with rainfall. Despite the country's low elevation, a variety of transitional environments are found between the plateau and river floodplains that draw moisture from diverse sources.