Gambia Country Risk Update – 2026

Key Stats – Gambia 2026

Executive Summary

Operational Context:

• The Gambia faces structural food insecurity driven by rain-fed agriculture, climate variability, high food prices, and a GNI per capita of USD 890 (2024); over half the population lives below the national poverty line.^[1]
• During the 2025 lean season, 244,000 people faced acute food insecurity, including 8,000 in IPC Phase 4 — a severe emergency tier representing the most vulnerable cohort in the country.^[1]
• ACLED data for June–July 2026 records zero conflict events and zero fatalities, consistent with the 13-month average of approximately one event per month with no recorded fatalities — Gambia remains a low-conflict environment with no acute security constraints on WFP access.^[2]
• Fuel prices have risen sharply: diesel +10% and petrol +18% month-on-month as of April 2026, compressing transport and logistics margins for all WFP activities. Dry fish prices rose 13% over the same period, signalling broader cost-of-living pressure on vulnerable households.^[3]

Vulnerability Scale:

• Previously (Nov 2024 IPC): 131,930 people in Phase 3+. The March 2025 IPC analysis returns zero for the analysed population — this is a data reporting discontinuity, not a recovery signal; the situation should be treated as unresolved until a fresh IPC cycle is published.^[4]
• Previously (2025 ACR): 244,000 people faced acute food insecurity during the lean season, with structural vulnerability concentrated among rain-fed smallholder farming households and urban poor affected by imported food price inflation.^[1]
• Nutrition prevention coverage remains critically limited: activity was restricted to 3 of 7 regions in 2025 due to funding constraints, leaving four regions with no preventive nutrition programming.^[1]
• The Casamance region of neighbouring Senegal — bordering Gambia — exhibits poverty rates above 50%, collapsing artisanal fisheries, and organised irregular migration at scale (approximately 40,000 annually on the Atlantic route). USAID dismantlement has degraded the NGO safety net in this border zone, with potential spillover implications for cross-border livelihood and food security dynamics in Gambia's northern border communities.^[5]

Trend Indicators:

• Rice (basmati, broken) prices fell 1% month-on-month to GMD 216/kg (April 2026) — a marginal stabilisation. However, fuel cost increases of 10–18% m/m represent a structural cost shock to food supply chains and will likely be transmitted into food prices by mid-2026 lean season.^[3]
• The West and Central Africa regional HNRP stands at 32% coverage ($1.74bn funded against $5.40bn required) as of 13 July 2026 — the lowest coverage in the 2016–2026 historical series, materially below the prior low of 44% in 2024. This regional financing crisis creates indirect pressure on WFP's ability to maintain programming scale in lower-profile countries such as Gambia.^[6]
• US cumulative regional contributions stand at $929.6M (45% of all West and Central Africa donor contributions), with zero new funding recorded in the most recent reporting week — a structural dependence risk with direct downstream implications for WFP regional resource allocation.^[6]
• No natural hazard alerts are currently active for Gambia (GDACS, last 14 days); no climate anomaly data is loaded for the country, representing a monitoring gap ahead of the rainy season.^[2]

WFP Operations:

• Previously (2025 ACR): WFP reached 203,334 unique beneficiaries. School feeding (SO2) reached 167,105 children (54% girls) in 422 schools — a 9.4% increase from 2024 — achieving 109.9% beneficiary achievement rate against plan, though feeding days fell from 156 to 120 due to funding constraints and higher-than-anticipated enrolment.^[1]
• SO1 (food assistance/emergency): 23.4% beneficiary achievement rate at 93.4% expenditure rate. Only 24,331 of 103,865 planned beneficiaries were reached; the climate shock sub-activity recorded zero beneficiaries against 8,800 planned, attributable to funding at only 35% of needs.^[1]
• SO3 (food assistance for assets/resilience): 6.2% beneficiary achievement rate at 75.9% expenditure rate. Only 2,924 of 47,400 planned beneficiaries reached. Micro-insurance, planned for 24,560 individuals, delivered zero — service delivery was limited to a dry-run phase.^[1]
• SO4 (system strengthening): achieved — 5 system components enhanced against a target of 5; indirect beneficiaries reached 197,756 against a planned 50,000. The Social Registry was used for flood response for the first time, and the Climate Adaptation Window with AfDB was approved.^[1]
• Local procurement reached 93% of school food commodities from 20 cooperatives — a high-performing supply localisation result. MAM treatment coverage exceeded annual targets.^[1]

Funding Outlook:

• Previously (2025 ACR): WFP mobilised USD 15.496 million in 2025 (including multi-year balances carried forward), against a CSP funding gap of 36.1%. Total available resources of USD 19.642 million exceeded the implementation plan of USD 9.690 million, but actual expenditure was USD 7.971 million — indicating absorption and pipeline management constraints alongside structural underfunding.^[1]
• Funding was heavily earmarked, limiting in-year rebalancing across strategic outcomes. Several contributions confirmed late, requiring rephasing to protect core entitlements. Predictable, multi-year flexible funding is identified as the critical gap to restore feeding days and expand preventive nutrition.^[1]
• The regional financing environment has deteriorated sharply. With the US recording zero new contributions to West and Central Africa in the most recent reporting week, and the regional HNRP at historic low coverage, Gambia faces elevated risk of compressed regional allocations — though no Gambia-specific funding figures are available from the regional corpus to quantify this directly.^[6]
• ECHO ($338.8M regional), Germany ($119.4M regional), Canada ($73.8M regional), and Switzerland ($73.7M regional) represent the next tier of regional donors; a consolidated regional funding pitch — rather than country-by-country appeals — offers the most viable near-term resource mobilisation pathway for WFP Gambia.^[6]

In The News

• UN Security Council Briefing on West Africa and the Sahel (UN Press): Seven-month UNOWAS briefing (November 2025–June 2026) signals sustained Council-level attention to Sahel security and humanitarian deterioration; for WFP Gambia, this reinforces the regional advocacy environment but also the competition for diplomatic and funding bandwidth from higher-intensity crises.^[7]
• Casamance Food Insecurity and Migration Dynamics (news): Structural food insecurity, USAID withdrawal, and organised irregular migration in Senegal's Casamance — Gambia's border region — signal potential cross-border livelihood and food security spillover; WFP Gambia should monitor border community vulnerability and explore resilience and livelihoods partnership opportunities with remaining NGO actors in the zone.^[5]

Potential Risks

Note: More than 10 documents were reviewed across the period June–July 2026, supplemented by the 2025 ACR. The intelligence is current as of 16 July 2026.

Discrepancies & Data Integrity:

• The March 2025 IPC analysis reports zero for the analysed population (returning 0% in Phase 3+), which contradicts the November 2024 IPC figure of 131,930 people in Phase 3+ across an analysed population of 2,422,712; this is assessed as a reporting or methodology discontinuity — the 2025 figure should not be interpreted as a food security improvement, and the 2025 ACR independently records 244,000 people facing acute food insecurity during the 2025 lean season, corroborating the persistence of significant vulnerability.

Footnotes

1. WFP Gambia Annual Country Report 2025 — WFP, 2025 (doc_id: ACR-GMB-2025)
2. ACLED conflict data via HDX and GDACS natural hazard monitoring — July 2026
3. WFP VAM Food Price Monitoring, Gambia — WFP, April 2026
4. IPC Acute Food Insecurity Analysis, Gambia — IPC Technical Working Group, March 2025 and November 2024
5. Casamance food insecurity and migration analysis — news, 15 July 2026 (ref://3)
6. West and Central Africa: 2026 Regional Funding Status — General Overview, 13 July 2026 — OCHA (doc_id: 4221308)
7. UN Security Council Briefing on West Africa and the Sahel (S/2026/537) — UNOWAS/UN Press, July 2026 (ref://1)