UN General Assembly
1997

economic development programme during the two-year transition period, which focused basically on building schools, health facilities, roads and other infrastructure as well as on boosting agricultural development in order to ensure food self-sufficiency by the year 1999. The main objective of this programme was to lay the basis for a genuine and sustainable democracy that is in consonance with our own social and other specificities as a nation. The successful completion of the transition period intensified our Government’s determination to continue the effective implementation of measures and programmes designed to promote and achieve the sustained socio- economic development of the Gambia. In order to accomplish this task, the Government of the Gambia, in collaboration with the private sector, has embarked on the implementation of a national development programme to transform the country economically and socially over a 25-year period into a developed, economically viable State. The blueprint for this socio-economic development is called Vision 2020. The overall orientation of this development blueprint, as enunciated in its mission statement, is: “To transform the Gambia into a financial