Sport policy in the Gambia: power imbalances between the government and the NOC

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of the sport policy landscape in the Gambia. The formation of the National Sport Council (NSC) 27 years after the Gambia National Olympic Committee (GNOC) was formed meant a significant shift of power and responsibility to the government agency. Using government documents, newspaper articles and radio outputs, this article presents the sport landscape of the Gambia in three main ways: (1) highlights the power play between the NSC and the GNOC in the quest to insert authority; (2) the role of civil society in the local sport landscape and (3) demonstrates how international sport organisations disrupts policy priorities in developing countries. This article demonstrates that powerful individuals in unitary systems of government do significantly change the course of sport policy priorities. In addition, the large dependence on state resources to build sport infrastructure and implement events renders the ambitious policy documents insolent in a poor country like the Gambia. Though some of the government institutions share similar aims in their policy documents these are hardly put into practice in reality and sometimes lead o duplication of responsibilities.

KEYWORDS:

• sport policy
• power imbalance
• The Gambia
• developing country
• Africa

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

Funding from international sport organisations is a strong source of coercive power by local sport organisations. The funds and decisions taken by international sport organisation mostly serve as powerful tools for individual local sport officials to leverage for personal gains. International sport organisations should therefore be aware of this disruption caused on local sport policies in small and developing countries like the Gambia.The nexus between policy and practice is very wide in the context of the Gambia. Though there is an evident lack of expertise in many areas of sport, the functions of other oversight institutions like the National Assembly are limited to the functioning of the institution and not the evaluation of the achievement of the policy priorities. From the establishment of the NSC in 2000, the first policy document was only drafted in 2009 and from 2019 when this expired, a new policy is yet to be published. In addition, a strict oversight regulation of the sport system will hinder the duplication of institutional functions and policy priorities like those of MOYS and MOBSE. This will facilitate the production of comprehensive policy documents with clearer objectives, roles and responsibilities of the stakeholders.