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Gambia Vibes · Heritage · Colonial history

Look at a map and The Gambia and Ghana seem to have nothing in common: different seas of French-speaking neighbours, more than 1,500 kilometres apart. But for most of the 19th and 20th centuries they were parts of one British West Africa. They had the same governors, the same soldiers, the same money and, in the end, the same dream of independence.

One trade, two coasts

The link begins in the slave trade. The Royal African Company and later the Company of Merchants Trading to Africa ran both Fort James on the Gambia River and Cape Coast Castle on the Gold Coast. The same London offices kept the accounts, the same ships called at both, and captives from both coasts crossed the Atlantic in the same trade. Read The Gambia and the Atlantic slave trade.

One government

From 17 October 1821, Britain's scattered West African possessions, the Gambia and the Gold Coast among them, were placed under one governor-in-chief in Freetown, Sierra Leone. That arrangement was dissolved in 1850 and created again in 1866, as the West African Settlements, until it finally ended on 28 November 1888. Governors, officials, judges and missionaries moved up and down the coast. The first governor of the combined territory, Sir Charles MacCarthy, gave his name to an island in the Gambia River and died fighting the Asante in 1824.

One army

The same few units guarded all the British posts: the Royal African Colonial Corps, then the West India Regiments, and from 1898 the West African Frontier Force, with battalions and companies from Nigeria, the Gold Coast, Sierra Leone and, from 1901, the Gambia. In both world wars Gambian and Gold Coast soldiers served side by side. In the Second World War they fought in the West African divisions in Burma. See Gambian soldiers and the Asante wars.

One money

From 1912 a single West African Currency Board issued the British West African pound for the Gambia, the Gold Coast, Sierra Leone and Nigeria. The same coins and notes were used from Bathurst to Lagos for half a century, until the new nations issued their own currencies: the Ghanaian pound in 1958, and the Gambian pound and then the dalasi in 1971.

One people on the move

Freetown sat at the centre of this world. The Krio, the descendants of freed Africans settled in Sierra Leone, spread along the coast as clerks, teachers, traders, lawyers and clergy. In The Gambia their descendants are known as the Aku, a community that shaped Banjul's churches, schools and civil service. Educated Africans from all four colonies studied at Fourah Bay College in Freetown, read each other's newspapers and married into each other's families.

Independence, apart

In the end the four colonies went their own ways. The Gold Coast became Ghana on 6 March 1957, the first in sub-Saharan Africa, under Kwame Nkrumah, who dreamed of a united Africa. The Gambia followed on 18 February 1965, small and poor, with many doubting it could survive alone. It soon tried a union of its own, with Senegal. Read Independence 1965 and the Senegambia Confederation, and for Ghana's story, MyGhana2027.com.

Sources: British West Africa: administrative dates. Charles MacCarthy. Gambia Regiment and the WAFF. J. M. Gray, A History of the Gambia (1940). G. I. C. Eluwa, "The National Congress of British West Africa", Journal of African History (1971).

Gambia Vibes · Part of the Ghana-Net network · Updated and fact-checked: 6 November 2026