Alumni Showcase

Transcript excerpts from the video:

10:37-12:08

“One day we had a whole school hall meeting, and then the Minister of Education at the time, one Mr. Cham, came to talk to us as students. A Gambian means of education, and he was talking to us about the situation in The Gambia and what the future would look like in The Gambia. Talking to students, he want to tell them what are the prospects of education later in your life. And when he stood there on the stage and he said, knowing that some of us want to become doctors, as usual, are doing biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics, and like. And he said, well by 1983, I remember 1983, Gambia would have had more doctors than it could possibly employ.

I didn't know anything about private practice. The only thing that I knew was being employed by the government as a doctor in the Royal Victoria Hospital, or any of the other outlets, hospital, health house that exists. I sat down. I started counting on my fingers from 1972. I say, I have this number of years to go to form six. And when I go to do medicine, I have a minimum five years, and maybe another one year or two years of housemanship. By the time I have my degree, I’m ready, there'll be no job for me in The Gambia. I tell you, I tell you, that day, I changed. I changed my mind. I say, okay, now that they're offering agricultural science, I will do agricultural science.”

31:35-32:39

AU (African Union), we developed one for the Great Green Wall. Senegal had one for the Great Green Wall. So I decided, okay, why don't we come together in Libya? And so we came together, Senegal censored, and African Union together, and brought it down to one simple regional program, which went to the African Union, so everyone could live with that and start a program. And from that, they went to the establishment of the secretariat for the Great Green Wall, which was first in N'Djamena, Chad, but then finally it was moved to Mauritania. The desert is a natural phenomena. It's difficult to stop it. You gotta stop it. What you can do is to reduce the rate at which it destroys. It was seen also as one of the ways, I mean later on, it's been seen as one of the ways to implement the convention to combat desertification. One of the implementing keys for that one, it's a very effective one because it's not just the fixing of the soil, but the improvement in the livelihood of the people, poverty reduction, and the like. So it was a very, very good idea. 

43:52-44:20

“Everything that I did was after my master's degree program, you know. That catapulted me through everything that I have been doing. Through the support, of course, of my government, the support of the people that I worked with in the Department of Forestry, and also in the African Union. 'Cause no one is an island, you know. You work with people, you influence people, and people influence you, and you have to appreciate that. And I'm really appreciative of everyone that I worked with, and also AFGRAD, particularly.