The Gambia: passenger data rules and border system records

Data protection law and oversight

The Gambia's National Assembly passed the Personal Data Protection and Privacy Bill, as reported by Aduwo Ayodele of Peoples Gazette on 6 October 2025 ⁸. The bill then awaited presidential assent, and Paradigm Initiative urged President Adama Barrow to sign it ⁸.

The National Assembly website lists a Data Protection and Privacy Bill, 2024, which provides for data subject rights, controller and processor duties, cross-border data flows and regulatory oversight ⁷. This page found no record of assent or of a data protection authority in operation ^7,8.

The Securiport contract at Banjul airport

The National Audit Office (NAO) says the government entered a contract with Securiport LLC, a Delaware company, on 20 June 2018 ¹. It covers civil aviation and immigration security services and e-visa management under a build, maintain and transfer model ¹. The original term was 10 years. An addendum signed on 29 March 2019 extended it to 15 years ¹.

The contract sets a security fee of US$20 or D1,000 per arriving and departing international passenger, with airlines as withholding agents ¹. The revenue split is 75% to Securiport and 25% to the Gambia Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA), paid from a joint account ¹.

The NAO letter does not state who owns the passenger database or where its servers sit ¹. It found that backup copies go to the immigration commissioner yearly without the involvement of Immigration IT staff, that no disaster recovery site exists, and that computers used for daily operations had no antivirus ¹.

National Audit Office findings

The NAO management letter covers 1 September 2019 to 31 May 2021 and was posted on the NAO website in November 2022 ¹. Its findings include the items below ¹.

• The deal began as an unsolicited proposal and was not put to competitive bidding ¹.
• An Attorney General letter of 12 July 2016 advised against an automatic renewal clause and a term over five years. The contract was signed without taking that advice into account ^1,2.
• The Ministry of Finance approved D164,053,036 to Securiport for arrears from 1 October 2019 to 31 August 2020. The auditors said the government had no obligation to pay it ¹.
• Reported revenue was US$250,315.93 (D12,928,817.70) below expected revenue ¹.
• The GCAA first received its 25% share on 20 May 2021, about seven months after collections began. The first payment was D16,452,987.30 ^1,10.
• The NAO recommended a review of the whole contract, an investigation to establish who was responsible for disregarding the Attorney General's advice, and that Securiport refund or compensate the government for losses it identified ^1,2.

Official and company responses

In the letter, the Office of the President said the justification for the extension to 15 years "is not considered plausible" and proposed a re-examination with the Ministry of Justice ¹. The GCAA gave two dates for the joint account arrangement, June 2021 and June 2022 ¹. In a company statement in the same letter, Securiport said the revenue books given to the auditors were complete and called some misdirected deposits a human mistake ¹.

On 27 September 2022, in a letter published by The Point, the Office of the President asked the Attorney General and Ministry of Justice to lead a review of the contract, including putting the charge into airline tickets ³. On 15 February 2023 a government press release said the report was first published in November 2022 and that a taskforce would investigate and renegotiate the contract ⁴. In a company statement on 2 June 2023, Securiport said the fee remained US$20 and that the local-currency change came from exchange rates ⁵.

Parliament and current status

On 6 July 2026 The Standard's Tabora Bojang reported that the National Assembly's Public Enterprises Committee advised the Finance, Interior and Works ministries to review the contract and consider termination ⁶. The committee said the GCAA transferred D43,824,494.38 to government from the collections for July to December 2022 ⁶. The report carried no response from the GCAA, the government or Securiport ⁶.

The Standard dated the NAO report to 2023, and the government dated it to November 2022 ^4,6. This page found no public record of termination or recovery of the D164,053,036 as of 21 October 2026 ^1,6.

Chronology