Background of Mariama Khan, Independent Presidential Candidate, Marrall Kendoe
My name is Mariama Khan. I am a Gambia citizen who will contest the December, 2026 presidential elections in The Gambia, on an independent ticket. I am from New Town, Brikama, Kombo Central, in the West Coast Region (WCR) of The Gambia. Brikama is a town of folklores, new opportunities, and nawetaan festivities.
In my early life, our home was a teeming household of people from different social status, ethnic and national backgrounds. Due to my father’s successful mechanic practice, different parents from The Gambia and Senegal entrusted their sons to him as apprentices. He had the same rules and equal privilige for everyone in the home: his biological children, the many apprentices and other people under his care. Thus, from my early life, I was introduced to inclusiveness, fairness, justice, education and service. As a young girl, during school holidays and sometimes weekends, I joined my mother’s market trading at the Brikama market. There, I was introduced to different clients- including some from Casamance and Guinea-Bissau. My trading experience and my home environment significantly shaped my worldview about the shared humanity among all humankind. Additionally, that experience instilled in me the virtues of kindness, empathy, love and labour.
The family values I was raised with emphasised faith, individual merit, hardwork, discipline, love for knowledge, truth, contentment, and existing peacefully. I was taught to never cut corners in life to get ahead, never walk on other people to get to the top, grow my own credentials and to live with integrity. My father’s popular dictum was:”If you want to do something that you do not want another person to know about, never do that something.” My family values guided my public service career in The Gambia and all my professional life. They nurtured in me the love for service, to be rational with power, protect the common good, the freedom to pursue one’s ambition, be far-sighted and visionary in life, value reflection and harmony and trust in possibilities even where circusmatnces seemed to say “impossible.”
As I pursue my ambition to become President of The Gambia in the December 2026 presidential elections, I am thankful that my past has instilled in me solid qualities that meet the demands of the office but also that will ensure I never fail, God willing, in my duty, when elected as President of The Gambia in December 2026. I look forward to transforming The Gambia into an inclusive, cohesive, properous and advanced country; a country that will be a source of pride for all its citizens.
If you are a Gambian citizen, and you wish to donate to our presidential run, you can send your donation through Wave on (+220) 738-984-1. Thank you for supporting our grassroots mobilisation and electoral campaign activities. We are here to deliver the Promise of a Leadership that Delivers! A leadership that has integrity, is competent, responsible, meaningful, and impactful.
Sincerely,
Mariama Khan
Independent Presidential Candidate – Marrall Kendoe.
About MARRALL KENDOE
Marrall Kendoe’s Leadership Philosopy
Marrall Kendoe is a national civic idea for a cohesive, advanced and strong Gambia. It believes political power must be used for service, growth and building, not domination and destruction. It also believes leadership is about responsibility, moral duty, fairness and enlightened action for the people. A leader is to serve the people, bring positive changes to their lives, ensure prosperity in the nation and assure all goodness in the lives of citizens.
Marrall Kendoe is committed to nurturing, promoting, supporting and sustaining responsible leadership across all levels of our governmental, political and social processes in The Gambia. Our promise of leadership centers around:
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A new leadership orientation.
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Leadership with clear boundaries, that is thoroughly educated about the right behaviour norms, is accountable.
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Leadership with honesty and courage to step aside when needed.
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Leadership that is enligtened, competent and meaningful.
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Leadership that recognises the fundamental human requirements for respect, dignity, and freedom for all Gambians.
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Leadership that will safeguard the rights of individuals and foster social cohesion.
Commitment to Gambian Families
Following the 2016 political transition in The Gambia, the country has witnessed an unprecedented corrosive political culture that rips families apart, erodes neighbourly bonds and destroys general social ties in Gambian society. A political and governance system that has no clear direction, is inept, and corrupted, thinks divide and rule is the only viable weapon it can use to entrench itself and its political cronies in power. There’s no surer way to destroy a country than destroying its families and social ties. Consequently, the Gambian family life has become more and more fragile largely due to a political culture that preys on social relations, family bonds and community ties. What inept leadership has broken, competent leadership must (re)build. Therefore, Marrall Kendoe’s national civic idea for a cohesive, advanced and strong Gambia puts the Gambian family, cohesiveness and Gambian indigenous languages as the foundation for national renewal. Our commitment to strengthening the Gambian family centers around:
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Marrall Kendoe’s motto is Family, Justice, Restore and Defend (FaJ RD). The first letters of the acronym are combined to form the word FaJ, which means healing in the Wollof language. Marrall Kendoe recognises that The Gambia has become a sick nation that needs healing, which starts with the Gambian family.
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Protect, rebuild and restore dignity to the Gambian family.
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Stand for the Gambian family, our people and our country.
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Rebuild trust within the family, and in public and social life.
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Reinitiate solidarity, cooperation and peaceful coexistence in our national landscape through restoring the Gambian family and social cohesion.
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Recognise Gambian families as the foundation of our nationhood.
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Implement programmes for building peaceful, cooperative and supportive families.
Why Gambians must vote for meaningful change in December 2026
A Practical Vision for The Gambia
Mobilising for the election of Mariama Khan, as the first female President of The Gambia in the December 2026 presidential election in The Gambia.
The Marrall Kendoe Solution
The Gambian nation faces uneasy times. In the last ten years, the country’s deep-rooted social and political corruption has caused high levels of governance, security, economic, social, and cultural crisis in the country. The nation’s deteriorating human security and public safety situation is alarming. Gambian families and communities continue to suffer different kinds of high-stake vulnerabilities in their day-to-day lives.
To compound the security, education, food security, health and other challenges Gambian face in the last ten years, The Gambian family has become extremely fragile, especially, especially in the periods after the 2016 political transition. The Gambian nation has become a landscape of political divisions and divisiveness, extensive human insecurity, unbridled public, social and moral corruption, fragile public safety, brutality, broken families and communities, culture loss and identity confusion.
The Gambia faces hard times. The numbers show it!
Poverty and Food Insecurity
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53% of the population live in poverty [1]
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29% of the country’s population are food insecure
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24% of households experience inadequate food consumption
Crime statistics
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126th out of 193 countries organised crime ranking
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40th out 54 crime-prone country in Africa
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14th out 15 in West Africa
Education
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13% of Gambian children have fundamental reading skills
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4% of Gambia children have basic numeracy skills.[3]
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89% learning poverty in The Gambia according to the World Bank UNESCO
Unemployment
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Unemployment increased from 6.3 % to 8.3% between 2024 and 2025
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31% of the population suffering from hidden unemployment.
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893 Gambian youth lose their lives between 2025 and 2026.
We live under a political culture in which power is used to break families, communities and the nation. This disturbing new reality ignores the fact that all Gambian ethnic groups are historically interconnected in society. The bonds between different social groups in The Gambia have been interwoven by centuries and decades of intermarriages, friendships, intergenerational co-operative partnerships, educational and age-set bonds, host-guest connectedness, educator-apprenticeship ties, collaborative work associations, and tolerant inter-religious solidarity. There cannot be a more wholistically destructive political culture in any nation than the one we currently live in, a political culture that preys on family bonds, social relations and community ties to destroy the entire moral fabric of society and insert hatred among families, neighbours and communities.
Inept and immoral leadership across different levels of our society contributed to the frustrations our nation faces in these modern times. What inept leadership has broken, competent leadership must (re)build. This is why Marrall Kendoe was born as a national civic idea for all Gambians to benefit from proper leadership and governance. Marrall Kendoe is a Mandinka phrase. However, Marrall Kendoe is not ethnic, tribal, or language-bound. It is a national civic idea for a cohesive, advanced and strong Gambia and it belongs to every Gambian. Hence, Marrall Kendoe’s emblem is the traditional water jar with its lid and drinking cup. In all Gambian communities, the water jar is for everyone to drink from, irrepesctive of ethnic background, religious or status in the community. Community mebers as well as complete strangers can freely drink from the public water jar, with no restrictions.This is symbolic of the renewed Gambia Marrall Kendoe aspires to build.
Marrall Kendoe, as our national civic idea believes that political power is about service, not domination. It’s rooted in ideas of responsible leadership that will ensure, promote and protect the welfare and wellbeing of all Gambians, irrespective of their background, economic status and location in the country. It is a promise for competent, honest and meaningful leadership that puts the Gambian family, social cohesion and our indigenous languages as the foundation of our national renewal. As a national civic idea, Marrall Kendoe fights for, and fierecely protects all Gambians and the interests of The Gambia. It is about leadership that delivers, a leadership that keeps its promises, a leadership that positively transforms Gambian lives, a leadership that restores our families and the good and desirable from our past, a leadership that uncompromisingly protects our present and our future, a leadership that believes in the ability of our indigenous languages to birth the social, economic, political and cultural transformation we need to become a competitive modern nation.
Marrall Kendoe has a strong conviction that we must use The Gambia’s indigenous languages, in addition to English, to foster inclusive, democratic and culturally appropriate governance that will improve political participation in the nation, to make our national leaders fully accountable to Gambian citizens.
As a national civic idea, Marrall Kendoe’s motto is Family, Justice, Restore and Defend (FaJ RD). The first letters of the acronym are combined to form the word FaJ, which means healing in the Wollof language. Marrall Kendoe recognises that The Gambia has become a sick nation that needs healing. We must join forces to rebuild all that has been broken in our nation. We must restore the values and practices of ethical leadership and followship that defined political and social life in the history of our heritage. We must rebuild our families. We must restore the dignity of all Gambians irrespective of what background they come from.
In the spirit of the healing labor that we must undertake to make our homeland wholesome, Marrall Kendoe’s national civic commitments are embodied in 9- Core Values, which are enumerated below.
The Marrall Kendoe Agenda: Marrall Kendoe’s 9 Core Values
1. Enlightened, Competent, Meaningful Leadership
2. The Family
3. Sacredness of Life
4. Protection of the Talented, Gifted and Women’s work
5. Youth
6. Restore Good Traditions and Values: Reversing CULTURE Loss
7. Honest Service
8. RECORD
The R stands for Reeducation.
The E stands for economic advancement.
The C stands for cultivate (agriculture).
The O stands for order-making.
The second R stands for responsible citizenship.
The D stands for discipline and diplomacy.
9.National Security
(See our full manifesto (coming soon) for more details on each of these areas).
[1] World Food Programme- https://www.wfp.org/countries/gambia.
[2] The Global Organized Crime Index Report 2021 and 2025, respectively.
[3] UNESCO, The Gambia Education Brief 2024.
Marrall Kendoe's 100-Days In Office: Immediate Action Plans
Marrall Kendoe Government's 6 Immediate Actions in the first 100-days of its rule.
In line with Marrall Kendoe’s national civic idea for a cohesive, advanced and strong Gambia, the Marrall Kendoe Government will pursue and realise the following 6 benefits for Gambian citizens and The Gambia in its first 100 days in office.
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Inaugurate a cabinet of competent, skillful, ethical, trustworthy and action and results-oriented Ministers of state, who will earnestly work to implement Marrall Kendoe’s agenda for national renewal.
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Subsidize the cost of essential commodoties in the country.
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Reduce the current D150,000 daily food allowance for the President and His family to D40, 000. The savings made from this will be invested in Health and Education.
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Enact policies to rationalize the rental market to make the housing market more friendly and affordable to Gambian families and other renters, and at the same time, make the rental market reasonably profitable for property owners.
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Kick start an industrilization program that supports the creation of factories and other job opportunities for Gambian citizens.
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Kick start local bus services in growth areas to make mobility easier and cheaper for Gambians, to alleviate transportation costs on citizens.
Marrall Kendoe Membership and Supporter Values: Fassaalaa/Arr Kaat/ Samakat
Members and Supporters of Marrall Kendoe are guardians of the Gambian family, society and nation. They undertake to be protectors and defenders of our nation, its citizens, resources and good traditions, cultures and values. In Mandinka, they are called Fassaalaa, and in Wollof, Arr Kaat/ Samakat. This national role for all Gambian citizens who are genuinely interested in the welfare and well-being of the nation, will be translated in all languages of The Gambia. As guardians of The Gambia, members and supporters of Marrall Kendoe undertake to uphold the following guardianship duties and responsibility for The Gambia:
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Be a a patriotic, proud citizen, who will protect Gambian values, the country and its foundational values, its resources, and future.
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Sincerely love The Gambia
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Fair and just towards all Gambians
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Execute their duties with conscience.
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Be honest, truthful and sincere people who value integrity.
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Disavow betrayal and all forms of socially destructive behaviour.
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Support Gambian families, the talented (gifted) and women’s work and value all human lives.
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Work hard and cultivate honest lives.
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Shun all forms of corruption and corrupt practices, especially in public office and community life.
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Believe in their ability to transform their lives and develop themselves and The Gambia.
If you love The Gambia and you believe in our cause to build a great, cohesive, wealthy nation where families are empowered, where community solidarity is supreme, where we all enjoy equal sense of belonging, get involved with Marrall Kendoe: donate to the mobilistion and campaign fund through Wave on (+220) 738-98-41, spread the Marrall Kendoe message, join the mobilisation and register as a member and supporter.
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