Our History

GAMSEM was founded in 1994 as a federation of grassroot cooperatives and spontaneous pre-cooperative societies, dedicated to the promotion of the practice of cooperatives for resource mobilisation, employment creation, poverty reduction and community development. Since its founding GAMSEM has lead, supported and/or coordinated cooperative projects in Gambia.

GAMSEM has helped member societies with more than 115 different micro-projects in the fields of horticulture, literacy and numeracy, fishing, farming, agric-input procurement, micro-business, marketing, exports, skills training, job-hunters club activities, etc. It aims to be a vehicle for empowering the powerless and the marginalised; an enterprise of the poor and the disadvantaged; a tool of the downtrodden in their efforts at self-organisation and the dream to take matters affecting their lives in their own hands.

Several projects have been supported by institutions such as the World Bank, the European Commision, the African Development Bank (AfDB) and national development agencies such as Sida (Swedish International Development Agency).