Gambia’s housing development giant Mustapha Njie is dismayed by the ongoing environmental destruction in the southern coast of the country thanks to sand mining, hinting that the sand mining in Sanyang for the purpose of export and mining in other parts of Kombo South could hugely erode the district’s tourism potentials.
To Njie, widely referred to as Taf, the hitherto pristine sand dunes on the southern coastline could have served as magnet for tourism, describing them as the ideal, natural spots for golf courses and hotels.
“If we don’t build hotels, we cannot be competitive in tourism. Where they are prospecting sand; those sand dunes… Let’s forget about the environmental impact [of sand mining], but these are the locations we need to build hotels,” Taf bemoaned in an interview with Coffee Time With Peter Gomez on Tuesday morning. He continued:”Now, if you go to Sanyang and witness what’s going on there, your jaw will drop. It’s disheartening. You know they mined all the dunes. Those dunes could have been some future golf courses. You need those natural dunes for international golf courses, whereby people will come over and money would be spent. The hotels you want to build will be in those places[south coast].”
Taf cast his mind back to a study financed by the ADB dubbed the Second Tourism Development Study.
“And the study had identified what should go in all these sites here[south coast]. But unfortunately, most of those areas are being mined, some I think it’s sand we export. I don’t know the details.”
When suggested to him by host Peter Gomez that the sand being exported could be black sand, Taf responded:”I see it online but I do not talk about things I am unenlightened about. What I know, I will talk about. I don’t know the details but all we know is that there is sand, which is being mined and being exported. One, let’s look at the environmental impact [of sand mining] in the country. Secondly, where they mined have been completely mined. You can no longer do anything meaningful there.”
Taf hinted at the social and security implications of excessive sand mining to The Gambia.
“Our land size is not huge. The biggest threat to The Gambia is our land size; only 11,300sq km and, a population of 2.8 million,” highlighted the housing developer of sub-regional repute. He added:”You know what that has done, we are now number four[on Africa’s habitat ranking]. The last time I checked, we were about number seven, number eight. Today The Gambia is the fourth most densely populated country in Africa,number four. That’s alarming. And that has some social impact, it has some security impact, all these contests over land, demolitions. If you go to the law courts, there are so many cases there on land disputes. It is because there is a demand. This is scientific because the demand is much higher than supply. The population is much bigger than the area being inhabited. That’s a big threat and we need to watch this sand mining. It is not right.”
