Gambia Data Book

Last update: August 2025

This page contains information about some of the data available in the FEWS NET Data Explorer (FDE) for Gambia. This is not a comprehensive guide.

For information about using the filters and fields for specific domains in the FDE, see Choose a Data Domain.

Summary table

Country food security context

Statistical reporting units

Gambia usually uses administrative units as their statistical reporting units.

Administrative (admin) units are the geographical areas into which a country is divided. FEWS NET uses the following terminology: National boundary = admin 0, First sub-national division = admin 1 (e.g., states in the United States), Second sub-national division = admin 2 (e.g., counties in the United States), and so on.

Admin 1: There are five “Regions” (also known as “divisions” until 2007), and one city.

Admin 2:  Each of the Regions contain at least one Admin 2-level Local Government Area (LGA). 

Admin 3:  At the Admin 3-level, inside each LGA, are the “districts”. There are currently 43 of them, each containing a number of towns with a local Town Council form of government.

At the Admin 1- and Admin 2-levels, no changes in boundary shapes or locations have been noted.

Crop data

Explore our crop data.

View our documentation on using the Crop Domain.

Crop estimate data sources

The Ministry of Agriculture, Gambia is the official source of crop statistics for the country.  The immediate source for almost all the data included here is the now defunct (U.N. Food and Agriculture (FAO) CountryStat, Gambia site.

The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre also provided crop statistics data used in training sessions it conducted with the Gambian Ministry of Agriculture. 

No public-facing source of more recent crop statistics has been found.

Crop reporting units

Crop statistics are reported from the Admin 2-level LGA entities. 

Year and season definition

The annual agricultural year (or cropping year) runs roughly between June 15 and October 31 of the same year.

Primary crops

The principal food crops grown in the country are maize, rice, groundnuts and vegetables.  Crops represented in the crop statistics, and their crop codes, are these:

Production systems

No production system break-outs (e.g. irrigated or rainfed, commercial, small-farm, etc.) are provided in the source data.

Crop statistics context

Crop statistics included here run between 1988 and 2012.

Gambia reports area sown in hectares, and quantity produced in tons. No data are provided for area harvested. Yield in this database is computed by dividing quantity-produced by the area sown.

Methodology

No current information is available for the method the Ministry of Agriculture uses to make annual crop estimates.