Literature & Ideas
Distinguished
Halifa Sallah
born 1953
The Gambia's most persistent political thinker, and the voice of the 2016 coalition
Distinguished is level 3 of 4 in the The Gambia Hall of Fame: sustained excellence over a career, widely honoured at home. See how the levels work.
Why they are here
Founder of PDOIS and of Foroyaa newspaper, a writer and theorist who spent forty years arguing for a Gambian republic built on citizenship rather than patronage, and who spoke for the coalition that removed Yahya Jammeh.
Halifa Sallah co-founded the People's Democratic Organisation for Independence and Socialism in 1986 and the newspaper Foroyaa, which published continuously through the Jammeh years at considerable risk and remains a paper of record.
He has been a National Assembly member, a presidential candidate, and above all a writer — on citizenship, on constitutional design, on why Gambian politics keeps producing strongmen. When the opposition coalition beat Jammeh in December 2016 and he refused to go, Sallah was its spokesman through the standoff that followed. He has been detained more than once for his journalism and his politics.
He has been a National Assembly member, a presidential candidate, and above all a writer — on citizenship, on constitutional design, on why Gambian politics keeps producing strongmen. When the opposition coalition beat Jammeh in December 2016 and he refused to go, Sallah was its spokesman through the standoff that followed. He has been detained more than once for his journalism and his politics.
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