Lamin Jabbi, Minister of Communication and Digital Economy
By Fatou Sillah
The Minister of Communication and Digital Economy, Lamin Jabbi, has said The Gambia now possesses the most advanced data protection legislation in the ECOWAS region, citing the recency and scope of the country’s legal framework.
Speaking in an interview with West Radio, Mr. Jabbi said the 2025 law was designed to safeguard citizens’ personal information both domestically and beyond national borders.
“We have the most advanced data protection legislation in the entire ECOWAS region,” he said, pointing to the law’s modern provisions and wide applicability.
The minister said the government has already established both a legal and policy framework for data protection and assigned oversight responsibilities to the Access to Information Authority. He explained that consolidating these functions under a single commission is intended to streamline regulation and enforcement.
“We already have a law in place; we also have a policy in place,” he said. “We have decided to place data protection under the commissioners so that one commission would be able to regulate access to information while, at the same time, deal with data protection.”
Mr. Jabbi added that efforts are underway to strengthen institutional capacity through international benchmarking and training. Commissioners recently undertook study visits to Nigeria and Kenya to enhance their readiness to implement the law effectively.
“The commissioners just returned from a benchmarking visit to Nigeria and Kenya,” he said. “We are training them to make sure that they are able to do the work required under the law.”
According to the minister, the legislation provides detailed guidance on how personal data should be collected, stored, processed, and ultimately destroyed. It also mandates the registration of data processors.
“Who processes the data? They need to be registered. What data can be collected, and the length of storing that data be stored? How can that data be destroyed? All these are things that are defined within the law,” he said.
Mr. Jabbi also raised concerns about the growing volume of personal information Gambians share online, often without full awareness of the risks.
“A number of Gambians are using social media, leaving a lot of data behind,” he said. “Wherever they go, they leave something about themselves—names, biometrics, dates of birth—almost everything about the person is online.”
He noted that the law has extraterritorial reach, applying to foreign entities that process the personal data of Gambians, regardless of where those entities are based.
“If you are a data processor and want to process personal data of an individual, even if you are a company in the US, France, China, or Senegal, our data protection legislation comes under its regime. In other words, you need to be regulated,” he said.
Mr. Jabbi added that The Gambia’s approach is attracting attention across the region, with several ECOWAS member states examining the framework as a potential model.
“At the ECOWAS level, a number of countries are looking at The Gambia as something they can really copy,” he said.
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