Gambia declares national emergency as blackout protests turn violent in Banjul

President Adama Barrow declared The Gambia's electricity crisis a national emergency Tuesday night, acknowledging government "shortcomings" after two nights of violent protests over blackouts that have run as long as 48 hours in parts of Greater Banjul. In a televised address from State House, Barrow said fans have "stopped turning," children "work in the dark" and mothers "throw away stale food" because of the outages, and pledged the situation would improve by the end of October.

Protests broke out Monday and Tuesday nights across Banjul, Westfield, Tabokoto, Brikama, Busumbala, Bakau, Brufut, Farato and Latrikunda, with crowds burning tires, building roadblocks and chanting "Barrow must go!" The unrest turned destructive in places: a sub-office of the state utility NAWEC was stormed and an arson attempt made at Latrikunda, a Mauritanian-owned shop was looted in Tabokoto, and ruling-party offices were vandalized in Farato. Police used tear gas to disperse crowds near both the presidential residence and NAWEC headquarters. No official casualty or arrest figures had been released as of Wednesday.

Why the lights keep going out

The Gambia's grid depends heavily on hydropower imported from Guinea through the regional OMVG interconnector, a system linking Gambia, Guinea, Senegal and Guinea-Bissau that was built with support from the World Bank and European lenders. Reduced rainfall this year cut Guinea's hydropower exports just as high heat pushed Gambian demand to record levels, compounding failures in the country's own aging generating units. NAWEC had warned as early as June that it needed emergency government funds to import additional power from Senegal's utility, SENELEC, to cover peak evening hours.

Barrow's government says electricity access has grown from 36% of the population in 2017, when he first took office, to 90% today — a figure his administration points to even as it concedes the network cannot reliably keep the lights on for those it already reaches. To address the immediate shortage, the president announced a new 24-megawatt generating unit at the Brikama Power Station, targeted for completion by the end of October, and said a 50-megawatt solar plant already under contract for the town of Soma is moving into construction.

NAWEC's own finances point to how strained the system had become well before this week's protests. In June, the utility asked the government for 662 million dalasi, roughly $9 million to $10 million, in emergency funds to import up to 70 megawatts from Senegal's SENELEC over 50 days during peak evening hours. NAWEC managing director Gallo Saidy has attributed part of the shortfall to climate change and, in comments reported by multiple outlets, to disruption in regional energy markets tied to the wider conflict between the United States, Israel and Iran — a claim independent economists have not verified. The Gambia's dependence on imported power was meant to have been addressed by the roughly $164 million Gambia Electricity Restoration and Modernisation Project, backed by the World Bank and European lenders between 2019 and 2025, which financed the OMVG interconnection now struggling to deliver enough Guinean hydropower during a drier year — part of a wider push the World Bank has documented to integrate West African power grids.

The phrase "state of emergency" carries particular political weight in Gambian politics. The country's last declared state of emergency came in 2017, invoked by then-president Yahya Jammeh in a failed attempt to cling to power after losing an election to Barrow — a crisis that ended only after regional military intervention forced Jammeh into exile. Barrow's use of similar language now, even applied narrowly to the power sector, has not gone unnoticed by an opposition eager to draw comparisons between his government's struggles and the one it replaced.

"There is no light everywhere. There is no light. People have been crying about electricity," said Ousainu Jammeh, a Banjul resident, describing the toll of the outages on daily life.

Political stakes rise before December vote

The crisis lands three months before Barrow seeks a third term in a presidential election set for December 5. He first took office in 2016 promising to serve only a single term and to pursue term limits before reversing course; his opponents, a fragmented field that includes veteran politician Ousainou Darboe, have seized on the blackouts as evidence of governing failure heading into the vote. Modou Lamin B. Bah, a member of parliament for Banjul North, told local media "enough is enough," adding that "the capital deserves 24-hour power and 24-hour water. Anything less is unacceptable."

Barrow has responded by creating a Presidential Task Force on Electricity Supply, chaired by the vice president, which he said would issue public updates every two weeks — a commitment that gives Gambians, and the political opposition, a concrete benchmark to measure the government against between now and the election. Information Minister Ceesay said the government was "treating the situation with the seriousness and utmost urgency it deserves."

What happens next

The immediate test is whether the new Brikama generating capacity actually comes online by Barrow's self-imposed October deadline and whether it is enough to end the rolling outages before the solar plant in Soma is completed. Beyond the technical fix, the task force's promised biweekly updates will be watched closely for signs of progress, or its absence, as the December 5 election approaches. Regionally, Gambian officials are also watching whether Senegal and Guinea can increase power exports enough to relieve pressure on the interconnected grid before the next dry season narrows hydropower supply again. For a country of roughly 2.7 million people where the electricity network only reached a third of the population a decade ago, the current standoff is as much about whether infrastructure investment can outrun demand growth as it is about any single power plant or contract — a test that will play out in public, on a biweekly reporting schedule, through the final weeks of Barrow's re-election campaign.