Gambia’s electricity crisis boiled over into open unrest on the streets of Banjul overnight. Residents fed up with blackouts stretching close to two days confronted police with burning tyres and makeshift barricades.
Officers fired tear gas to break up crowds who had massed at several points across the capital. Demonstrators gathered outside President Adama Barrow’s official residence, a Reuters witness reported. Plumes of smoke hung over Banjul as protesters chanted “Barrow must go!” Flames lit up the darkened streets through the night.
Gambia’s electricity crisis has dragged on for months, but Tuesday’s demonstrations marked a sharp escalation. In Farato, angry crowds gathered outside the residence of Vice President Mohammed B.S. Jallow. Others tore down banners at a local office of the ruling National People’s Party. It was a sign that frustration has curdled into open hostility toward the governing party itself.
Some residents say their homes have gone without power for up to 48 hours at a stretch, according to Reuters. Ousainu Jammeh lives in the Westfield area of Banjul. He said tear gas landed inside his house, prompting him to join the crowds outside. “There is no light everywhere. There is no light. People have been crying about electricity,” he said. Once the unrest died down before dawn, he joined a group of young men who used water to put out the fires and clear away the barricades.
The timing could hardly be worse for Barrow, who is seeking a third term in a presidential election expected in December. Gambia’s electricity crisis has become a live political liability just as campaigning intensifies. It hands opposition figures fresh ammunition against a government already under pressure over living costs.
NAWEC, the state utility responsible for keeping the lights on, has struggled to explain the scale of the failures. In a mid-August statement, the company pointed to an unforeseen surge in demand that reached roughly 140 megawatts nationwide amid high temperatures. It cited constraints on imported power and a technical fault affecting one of its major generating units. NAWEC said load shedding would be confined mainly to peak hours between 8pm and 4am. Residents in several areas have reported outages running well beyond that window, some for a full day or more.
NAWEC did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday, Reuters reported. That silence has done little to calm anger over Gambia’s electricity crisis, which boiled into its most visible protests yet.
Barrow was due to visit NAWEC facilities on Tuesday morning before addressing the nation at 8pm local time. The response comes only after months of smaller, scattered demonstrations failed to force meaningful change. Civil society groups, among them Gambians Against Looted Assets, had already given NAWEC a ten-day ultimatum back in June over Gambia’s electricity crisis. They warned that promises without results would no longer be tolerated. That deadline came and went with little visible improvement, and the blackouts have since worsened rather than eased.
For many Gambians, the frustration goes beyond inconvenience. Blackouts have disrupted hospitals, forced students to study by candlelight and cost small businesses income they can ill afford to lose. Gambia’s electricity crisis has become shorthand for wider grievances about governance and accountability less than four months before voters head to the polls.
Whether Tuesday’s address from Barrow offers concrete solutions or simply more assurances remains to be seen. What is clear is that patience among ordinary Gambians is running thin, and Gambia’s electricity crisis now sits at the centre of the country’s election year.-
