Surrounded by the former French colony of Senegal, The Gambia forms a narrow strip of land on either side of the River Gambia. The country is low-lying and extends inland for 320 km. It is never more than 50 km wide. The Gambia has a population of just 800 000 and is the smallest country in West Africa.
The tourist season runs from November to April and visitors come mainly from Britain, Sweden, France and Germany. Since it began developing its tourism industry in the late 1960s, the number of visitors to the country has increased from just 20 in 1965 to well over 100 000 in the early 1990s. This growth may partly be due to the American best-seller Roots, in which the writer Alex Haley claimed to have traced his ancestors back to the Gambian village of Juffure. The village is now a major tourist attraction.
Most of the country's 17 resort hotels are concentrated on the coastline around the town of Bakau. Several of them are wholly or partly owned by the Gambian government. An estimated 7500 Gambians are directly employed in the tourism industry as cooks, receptionists, bookkeepers, drivers and guides. In 1990, tourism brought The Gambia $15 million in foreign exchange or 10% of Gross National Product.
The government also earns income from the sale of land, taxes paid by the companies which own the hotels and customs duties on foreign equipment such as construction machinery. Alongside the benefits tourism has brought to The Gambia's economy, many of the problems associated with it are also beginning to be felt.
