Tourism & Trade
We believe that the power of tools plus skills can change lives.
Senegambia Craft Market is the home to many Gambian nationals who use their love and craft with culture to curate beautiful items using the most unique of techniques and heavily rely on the tourism trade with visits to The Gambia to survive, visiting and shopping here whilst local is essential to the sustainability of a very core community.
The Market
Senegambia Craft Market is a vibrant community of makers who craft locally sourced materials into beautiful souvenirs and goods.
This West African market was founded in the early 1980s and has well over 60 craft stalls with street food also nearby. These market makers are an amazing community of mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters with children who build their lives using the business of crafted African goods and are so relaxed in their approach, just visiting gives them joy.
If you are on holiday this cultural retail therapy is a must, featuring a variety of artesian skills, from painted hand carved masks, woodcarvings, silver, leather wallets, sandals, pottery, musical instruments, clothing, dyed and traditional African material textiles.
Our Story
Senegambia Craft Market Online is on a mission to bring sustainable trade to traders in The Gambia. This online space harnessed the on-the-ground community of traders to enable them to build a better life for themselves and their families through digital connectivity with the world.
SCM will see traders' skills appreciated beyond the coast. Through creating an online directory for each of the traders who were massively affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and many poverty-driven factors that prohibited Africans even prior, suddenly they all can be seen, reached and receive global support from the rest of the world both beyond and ahead of any pandemic.
SCM are on a mission to bring these traders to the digital space by enabling the celebration of culture and helping them to rebuild their community. You can donate, shop and plan your visits but, most importantly, connect.
Each trader is gifted a free webpage to showcase their shop and business offering, giving travellers an insight before arrival. Our goal, with your help, is to cover their rent costs annually so they can focus on their crafts and trade, contribute to global fashion and artesian projects and build on their community wealth.
Stay tuned to the blog as the journey to unite various worlds unfolds.
Coming Soon is our trader's directory, where you can tap into an Artesian directly, plan your custom pieces or next creative project and pick them up when you travel onsite and visit this charming place on The Smiling Coast of Africa.
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Bringing the traders behind the beautiful crafted Gambian products to the global market is our core mission. Giving them space in the digital world to showcase, amplify and reach is our consistent mission as we build on the community so Gambians can have the opportunity to work and earn a living, to be self-reliant, is what we believe is the best or most effective way people can rebuild their lives with dignity.
Gambians
Global
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An artisan is someone that works with their hands to create unique, functional and/or decorative items using traditional techniques. Artisans are masters of their craft, artisanal techniques are learned through decades of tribal knowledge and passed down within families and communities we celebrate and enable this through global skills appreciation and respect for our traders craft.
Skills
Appreciation
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We endeavor to build a collaborative and engaged trader community that provides both inclusive resources and opportunities to our artisans, such as language skills, financial courses, and business education, but also offers opportunities to give back to the local community, such as donating items, community engagement programs and skill-share workshops.
Community
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We are focused on eliminating waste from landfills and utilizing upcycled materials to help preserve the environment. We work with different companies and volunteers to achieve this initiative along with educating SCM artisans of the importance of sustainability.
Sustainability
Our Vision
Our core mission is to bring the traders behind the beautifully crafted Gambian products to the global market.
Giving space in the digital world to showcase, amplify and reach is our consistent mission as we build on the community so Gambians can have the opportunity to work and earn a living to be self-reliant, is what we believe is the best or most effective way people can rebuild their lives with dignity.
