The Gambia’s Water Paradox: How A Country With Plentiful Water Resources Is Failing To Provide Safe Water To Its People

Bintou Kijera was exhausted. Neither she nor her three-year-old daughter had slept the previous night: the little girl was simply too sick. The two were at The Gambia’s second biggest hospital, Serekunda General Hospital, where the toddler had been diagnosed with diarrhoea. “I have changed her diapers more than four times,” the young woman said, pointing at the pale and malnourished looking girl mounted on her back. Neither Kijera nor the nurse who diagnosed the condition of her daughter could say for certain what caused her diarrhoea. “I don’t actually know whether it is caused by the food she ate or the water she...