Kristian

toc ** Gambia ** = = Gambia, officially **Republic of the Gambia** is a rather small country in the most western part of Africa. The Gambia officially became a country the 24th April 1970; 5 years after being released from the UK.

The Gambia is a relatively poor country, and has a history chained with a lot of other African countries because of the slave trading.

media type="googlemap" key="http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=no&geocode=&q=Gambia&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=34.671324,79.013672&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Gambia&z=8&ll=13.443182,-15.310139&output=embed" width="303" height="252" align="right" =** Facts **= Capital - Banjul Official languages - English Area - 10,380 km2 Population - est. 1,705,000

=** History **= == The Englishmen has been in and out of The Gambia since they first came to Africa. They were mostly peaceful, but tried to merchant gold and ivory, or o ther valuable resources or minerals.

Gambia was not colonized until 1758. After this the slave trading started, and “as many as 3 million slaves” (source [|Wikipedia]) were sent to America du ring the triangular trade. Considering that there are only 1.7 million people in The Gambia today, this is a lot.

=** Religion **= The main religion in The Gambia is Islam (90%); however, the government chose not to make a state religion.

Other than Islam there is of course a nice mixture of a lot of other religions where 8% of the population is Christian, which leaves 2% to the minorities. =** Economy **= Gambia does not have any mines as other countries nearby, but depends on crops to get income. Some money basically comes from tourism and trading.

The main export from The Gambia is peanuts. There are other commodities too, like fish and cotton.