Sport policy in the Gambia: power imbalances between the government and the NOC

ABSTRACT The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of the sport policy landscape in the Gambia. The formation of the National Sport Council (NSC) 27 years after the Gambia National Olympic Committee (GNOC) was formed meant a significant shift of power and responsibility to the government agency. Using government documents, newspaper articles and radio outputs, this article presents the sport landscape of the Gambia in three main ways: (1) highlights the power play between the NSC and the GNOC in the quest to insert authority; (2) the role of civil society in the local sport landscape and (3) demonstrates how international sport organisations disrupts policy priorities in developing countries. This article demonstrates that powerful individuals in unitary systems of government do significantly change the course of sport policy priorities. In addition, the large dependence on state resources to build sport infrastructure and implement events renders the ambitious policy documents insolent in a poor country like the Gambia. Though some of the government institutions share similar aims in their policy documents these are hardly put into practice in reality and sometimes lead o duplication of responsibilities.