Living in the Gambia

What sets Gambia apart from its French-speaking neighbors is language: English is the working tongue, so an outsider can follow workplace conversations from the start. Language is the easy part, though, because the economy is small and openings for someone without a local network are scarce. Pay sits near the floor and prices sit with it, and since tax takes almost nothing, a salary still stretches thin once the basics are covered.

Immigration into the Gambia runs along a single dominant corridor: of its 229.3K foreign-born residents — about 8% of the population — 145.3K were born in surrounding Senegal, far ahead of Guinea and Guinea-Bissau. That community has grown 23% over the past decade. Its own diaspora of 72.5K is smaller and leans toward Spain and Italy.