Gambia Import Trade Data: $2.45B in 2023, Up 167.55%

Vehicles Make Up Two-Thirds of Everything Gambia Imports

Gambia imported $2.45 billion worth of goods in 2023, up 167.55% from $914.92 million the year before, an increase so large it more than doubled the country's entire import bill in a single year. Vehicles led every category by a wide margin, worth $1.66 billion, or 67.86% of the total, a concentration in one product line that dwarfs almost anything else covered on this site. The average age of used vehicles exported to Gambia was close to 19 years old. That figure is part of a broader pattern in which millions of old, polluting, and unsafe cars are exported from richer regions to African nations every year, most without a valid roadworthiness certificate at the point of export. Gambia's position as a coastal trade gateway for the wider region likely means many of these vehicles pass through the country rather than staying in it, continuing on to buyers elsewhere in West Africa once they clear customs at Banjul.

Mineral fuels ranked a distant second at 10.68% ($261.53 million), a figure consistent with the same re-export role that dominates Gambia's export side, where imported fuel gets sold onward to neighboring countries through the Port of Banjul. Cereals added 2.99% ($73.11 million), and fertilizers contributed 1.94% ($47.40 million), both tied to a farm economy still centered on groundnuts and other staple crops. Electrical machinery took 1.87% ($45.80 million), and machinery and mechanical appliances added 1.32% ($32.24 million).

Salt, sulphur, and stone contributed 1.28% ($31.26 million), material tied to Gambia's construction and cement sector, and iron or steel articles added 1.21% ($29.54 million), another building-materials category. Animal, vegetable, or microbial fats and oils took 1.10% ($26.96 million), and plastics closed out the top ten at 0.94% ($23.10 million). Every category outside vehicles and mineral fuels stays under 3% of the total, a gap almost as extreme as the one separating fuel from everything else on Gambia's export list.

Denmark Supplies Nearly Two-Thirds of Gambia's Imports

Denmark was Gambia's largest supplier in 2023 at 65.61% ($1.61 billion), an unusually large share for a small European country to hold over any developing economy's import list. The fact sheet behind this page does not break out what specifically Denmark shipped. Vehicles are Gambia's overwhelming top import category, so a large volume of used or in-transit vehicles moving through Danish exporters is the most plausible explanation. That reading is consistent with independent reporting on Europe's broader role in supplying older secondhand vehicles to African markets. Senegal followed at 5.71% ($139.75 million), a modest share given that Senegal surrounds Gambia on every landward side.

India added 3.58% ($87.76 million), and China contributed 3.54% ($86.60 million), two suppliers whose combined share still falls well short of what Denmark alone accounts for. Belgium took 3.06% ($74.88 million), and Côte d’Ivoire added 2.36% ($57.80 million). Turkey contributed 1.63% ($40.02 million), and the United Arab Emirates took 1.61% ($39.42 million). Togo added 1.31% ($32.03 million), and Brazil closed out the top ten at 1.19% ($29.07 million). Combined, Denmark, Senegal, and India, the three largest suppliers, made up 74.91% of total import value in 2023, a concentration figure that would look far less extreme if Denmark's outsized share were set aside.

An Import Bill That Suddenly Jumped Off Its Own Trend Line

Gambia's import total climbed steadily for most of the five-year window before the 2023 surge. It stood at $494.03 million in 2019, then rose to $553.14 million in 2020, largely unaffected by the pandemic disruption that hit many larger economies harder. It climbed further to $708.38 million in 2021, then to $914.92 million in 2022, a gradual pace of growth roughly in line with a small, steadily expanding trade economy.

Then the total nearly tripled to $2.45 billion in 2023, up 167.55% year over year. That jump sits far outside the pattern of the four years before it. It likely reflects a small number of very large transactions rather than a broad-based increase in ordinary consumer or industrial demand. Denmark's sudden dominance of the supplier list points in the same direction. A shift this abrupt, concentrated this heavily in one category and one supplier, says less about a genuine change in what Gambia's economy needs and more about how a handful of large shipments can distort headline trade figures for a country this small.