Today we are introducing you to Lamin Saidy, who plays a key role in the National Disaster Management Agency of The Gambia. Lamin is the Regional Disaster Coordinator, where he supports the NDMA’s coordination of disaster risk reduction, prevention, preparedness, mitigation and recovery activities. He also serves as the focal point for African Risk Capacity Contingency Planning and as team lead for disaster assessment and data collection. The Gambia recently concluded a national workshop on Early Warnings for All under the theme “Ensuring Universal Protection from Hazardous Hydro meteorological, Climatological, and Related Environmental Events through Life-saving Multi-Hazard Early Warning Systems, Anticipatory Action, and Resilience Efforts by 2027.” Lamin has come to talk to us about The Gambia’s early warning strategy and priorities, and how EW4All is supporting them to achieve their aims.
1. What are the key early warning early action priorities of The Gambia National Disaster Management Agency?
The Gambia’s National Disaster Management Policy sets out a vision to transform the early warning system of The Gambia to become sustainable, modernized, diversified, and demand-driven. The National Disaster Management Agency (NDMA) is the national coordinating body for disaster risk management and supports regional and local level disaster risk management initiatives, including early warning systems. The NDMA facilitates and coordinates with relevant stakeholders around the implementation of disaster risk management activities and response for resilience building. It is responsible for conducting vulnerability and risk assessments, and coordinating with relevant government institutions, non-governmental organizations, private sector entities and communities in the identification, analysis and mapping of hazards. The National Disaster Management Agency is also responsible for maintaining a disaster risk information database with relevant damage and loss data.
The key early warning priorities for The Gambia National Disaster Management Agency are numerous, and include:
Strengthening of community-based early warning systems.
Integrating Indigenous Knowledge into early warning systems.
Establishing functional emergency operation centers.
Strengthening national capacities for data collection and reporting.
Promoting and strengthening community-based disaster risk reduction for timely response.
Building awareness, education, and trust in early warning systems.
Establishing a functional network of meteorological and hydrological monitoring stations and associated infrastructure to better understand climatic conditions and changes at short, mid-term and long-term ranges.
2. Tell us about how EW4All is supporting early warning systems in The Gambia?
The Gambia, as a climate-vulnerable country, faces increasing risks from floods, droughts, storms, and coastal erosion. Addressing these challenges requires a robust, inclusive, and community-driven approach to early warnings. The Gambia aims to scale up prior efforts and strengthen early warning systems.
EW4All has supported The Gambia to establish a functional coordination mechanism to drive and oversee implementation of the Roadmap and Action Plan in accordance with the four foundational pillars. The Gambia is ready to achieve the EW4All target by 2027 through partnership and collaboration with stakeholders. For example, a thorough gap assessment—the entry point for any robust early warning strategy—has been undertaken with technical support from the Early Warning for All lead agencies. The gap assessment reviewed the early warning strategies of national actors using SWOT analysis and indicated that the institutions of The Gambia are faced with numerous challenges including shortage of accurate and reliable climate information, lack of timely dissemination of early warning data and information, and regular lapses in communication with vulnerable communities and those at risk. It also indicated limited knowledge among actors, stakeholders and consumers of the early warning messages, lack of demand-driven response to disaster risk reduction, weak communication of information generated and dissemination issues.
EW4All has guided the development of as EWS Roadmap 2025 - 2027 to serve as a strategic driver for initiatives spanning the national to local levels, in order to channel investments towards enhancing early warning systems for more effective disaster risk reduction, and facilitate the seamless integration of comprehensive early warning mechanisms.
3. How has being a REAP Partner helped you scale up your work?
REAP has directly helped the National Disaster Management Agency of The Gambia to strengthen our partnerships with different organizations across the globe. REAP’s knowledge sharing, e.g. through monthly Partnership forums, has equally enhanced our ability to access information on early warning and early action which is critical to us as a government. Our connection with REAP, supporting its advocacy for greater disaster preparedness through scaling up early warning and early action at the national, sub-national and local levels has proven very effective. Since joining REAP, we have vigorously engaged with diverse partners to share experience and learned lessons on resilient building.
The National Disaster Management Agency is happy to state that we are part of REAP’s Working Groups, the Target 1 Working Group in particular, and our participation has availed us important opportunities to connect directly with others. Our engagements have created a window of an opportunity for collaboration with REAP Secretariat and for benefiting from the various opportunities REAP offers.
The Gambia National Disaster Management Agency has endorsed “Getting Ahead of Disasters: A Charter on Finance for Managing Risks” and we hope to collaborate and partner in the implementation of all the principles of the Charter.
4. What do you see as the next 1-2 priorities to tackle so that we can take early action to scale globally?
There is a need to enhance community-based early warning systems and promote indigenous knowledge. We need to develop effective, people-centered early warning systems that put an emphasis on risk knowledge, technical monitoring and warning capacity, communication and dissemination of warnings, and community response capability. Effective early warning systems also require minimum capabilities for the production of quality, timely and relevant risk information, with the participation of vulnerable communities, to inform decisions for early action at all levels.
Relevant actors need to use risk information to inform decision-making on early warnings at the country level, and to implement monitoring of the coverage and effectiveness of the systems. Strengthened collaboration between partners, Government institutions, academia, the private sector, and vulnerable communities will help to generate this improved risk information.