How a U.S. Consultancy Helped Oust Gambia’s Dictator

Jeffrey Smith knew he wouldn’t get much sleep on December 1. The American human rights advocate sat up all night in front of his computer in Washington, D.C., with his dog Theo, watching as votes in the Gambian election trickled in. More than 4,000 miles away, in the West African country, volunteers in the capital city, Banjul, were emailing him results. The contest promised to be pivotal: Yahya Jammeh, Gambia’s eccentric, autocratic president of 22 years, was facing an unexpectedly strong challenge from Adama Barrow, 51, a mild-mannered real-estate agent, who had months earlier been relatively unknown.

Sometime around 5 a.m. the next day, it became clear that Barrow was going to pull off an astonishing win, ending decades of state-sponsored intimidation and human rights abuses that many Gambians had been fighting against for years. When all the votes were counted, Barrow had secured 43.3 percent of the total, compared with Jammeh’s 39.6 percent share.

Barrow celebrated his win. But it was also a triumph