About Fatoumata
Fatoumata Jallow-Tambajang was named as the vice president of The Gambia in the government of President Adama Barrow from February 2017 to June 2018.
Before this, she was an adviser to the first president of The Gambia, Sir Dawda Kairaba Jawara, on women and children’s affairs, and Yahya Jammeh’s minister of health, social welfare, and women’s affairs, 1994-95.
She also worked with the United Nations Development Programme as a gender and development expert. Madam Tambajang has been instrumental in successfully bringing the fragmented opposition parties together to form a formidable coalition to challenge the entrenched and veteran president, Yahya Jammeh.
She was later made the chairperson of the coalition, which eventually defeated Jammeh in the 1st December 2016 presidential election, bringing an abrupt end to Jammeh’s 22-year grip on power.
Fatoumata was born on 22 October 1949 in Brikama. She was schooled in The Gambia, Senegal, and France.She is a national female icon, a mother of eight children, and an award-winning UNDP-groomed development practitioner focused on gender mainstreaming.
During her work with UNDP and other international women’s rights NGOs, she had manned various leadership positions for more than 20 years including in challenging environments such as in war-torn Mano River and Great Lakes regions.
She has received numerous awards, including the Center for Democracy and Development (CDD) Appreciation Award, the 2017 African Woman of the Year Award, and the OAU (AU) Eminent Person Award. She is also co-founder and current President of the Gambia Women’s Finance Association (GAWFA) and a member of the Women For Africa Foundation, Women For Strategic Leadership and Governance.
She is said to be a dynamic human rights defender, active in women’s and political activism in The Gambia. She has chaired the Gambia National Women’s Council, and represented it at the Gambia National Economic and Social Council for six years. She’s an ambassador for the Africans Rising movement.
