By Makutu Manneh
Seeking to confront what he describes as persistent gaps in the country’s democratic transition, Alasan Sowe on Friday launched the Centre for Good Governance, a new civil-society organization he says is designed to strengthen public integrity, safeguard citizens’ rights, and push for deeper youth engagement in national decision-making.
The unveiling of the Centre, known as CGG, drew activists, governance experts, and youth leaders who used the occasion to reflect on the country’s faltering reform agenda. Many speakers warned that The Gambia’s stalled constitutional and institutional overhauls continue to undermine public trust nearly a decade after the fall of the Yahya Jammeh dictatorship.
Sowe, the organization’s founder and executive director, opened the ceremony with a personal account of his rapid entry into civic advocacy. He joined Gambia Participates, a prominent governance watchdog, earlier this year with little experience, he said, and underwent rigorous training that helped shape his vision for the new institution.
“They trained me to the point where I can stand here today and launch a new organization,” he told the audience.
The idea for CGG, Sowe said, grew out of research showing that despite high-profile reform initiatives—including the Constitutional Review Commission, the Truth, Reconciliation, and Reparations Commission, and the ongoing security-sector overhaul—many of the country’s core governance weaknesses remain unaddressed. The repeated failure of draft constitutions in 2019, 2020, and again in 2024, he argued, underscores the depth of those structural challenges.
Among the Centre’s early priorities, Sowe added, will be promoting disability-inclusive elections, noting that blind voters and citizens using wheelchairs or crutches continue to face obstacles at polling stations.
Other speakers echoed his concerns. Marr Nyang, founder and executive director of Gambia Participates, said genuine accountability remains the missing pillar of sustainable governance.
“When officials commit wrongdoing and remain in their positions without consequence, institutions breed more corruption,” Nyang said. He urged Gambians to make fuller use of publicly accessible government data and encouraged CGG to push aggressively for transparency in public finance.
For Lala Touray, deputy executive director of the National Youth Service Scheme, the launch of CGG signals the need to better prepare young people for leadership.“If we fail to guide young people, we contribute to their disempowerment,” she said, calling on civil-society groups to create spaces that nurture emerging leaders.
Human-rights advocate Madi Jobarteh, who heads the Edward Francis Small Centre for Rights and Justice, described CGG’s entrance as a significant development in a civil-society sector he argued has long focused more on service delivery than on governance oversight. The Gambia’s deepest problems, he said, stem from weak institutions rather than insufficient services.
“You can invest everything in health and education, but if government institutions are not accountable, people will still suffer,” he said, praising CGG as a needed “moral and intellectual compass” at a time of fragile public confidence.