Senegambia Confederation - Problems With Senegambia's Border

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. 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 lead to a group of sympathizers in the other, bringing danger to the democratic regimes of both countries. This fear became reality during the 1981 coup attempt to oust President Jawara of the Gambia. Senegal’s pro-Western stance increased its security worries since its neighboring countries might use either the Gambia, secessionists in the Casamance region (the region of Senegal south of the Gambian border), or other dissident groups to destabilize the Dakar government. Special threats came from Kwame Nkrumah's Ghana, Mali, Ahmed Sekou Touré's Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, and Muammar al-Qaddafi's Libya. While some of this worry was speculation on the part of the Dakar government, Senegal would later (towards the end of the Senegambia Confederation) have border skirmishes with Mauritania. After the coup attempt, it became clear that the government’s 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 maintained trade barriers which provided for 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 that brought cheaper manufactured goods into Senegal. The black market also caused an export drain into the Gambia. 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 Not wanting to wait for the Senegalese marketing system to pay them, a larger number of 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.