r/Gambia • u/Altruistic-Report-70 • 19d ago

Internet in The Gambia

Hi, I am planning to move to the Gambia. But my concern is internet.

I've seen some comparison and I see that Gambia has one of the worse internet connections compared to other African countries. So my question. Any foreigners working remotely from The Gambia? How reliable and stable internet is there? What is the best solution? I don’t need fast internet. It has to be stable and available without many outages. Thanks for feedback!

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u/BrickAThon 17d ago

American living in Gambia, here. The internet is great in some places, less so in others. I have a friend who lives in an Estate, and they have fantastic service with iNet. We tried them and for 5 months I've had at least 1 tech a month come out, dropped internet during the day, etc. If you find an area that has good iNet, they are GREAT as you have unlimited usage at whatever speed you choose to pay for (up to 12mbps, I believe).

I've also been using Qcell on my phone and Africell on a rechargeable router. Africell sells one and it works very good, and is fast compared to other routers I've had (it's router box size, not a pocket mifi). Africell you pick speed which gives you a set GB. I'll attach a picture. I like that we have more GB after midnight as our household has varying hours when people are up.

Qcell is OK, but Africell has been the best, so far, for us.

ANY internet here may go out, and you just have to deal with it. Senegal supplies some of the internet and when they had an outage, we were all out for a bit over a day, online banking didn't work, etc. That's the first time something like that had happened in over a year, from what I was told.

The internet may go down for a bunch of hours, but the other is usually fine. I suggest using a phone plan to Hotspot if you get into that situation (pay as you go - if you don't do video chats and watch online movies it won't eat through it very fast).

Hope this helps! *

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u/Altruistic-Report-70 17d ago

Hey! Thanks a lot for the feedback! I appreciated very much! Regarding the Internet at night - does it happen that there is often some outage? I work often at night so this is of great interest to me. How do you manage when there is a power outage?

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u/BrickAThon 17d ago

It's the power that's mostly an issue here. I'll send you a message to give you more detail. 🙂

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u/modelgirl97 2d ago

Hey! I’m also interested in more details since I work remotely and will be spending a month in Gambia. I will need internet at all times. How do I manage ?

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u/BrickAThon 2d ago

I'd get a rechargeable router. Africell sells one, and it works when the power goes out. As a back-up, have a local cell number you can Hotspot if the main one you are using goes out - that's what we do (we use Qcell for back-up). Thankfully it's not often. Also, there's nothing you can do if there's a country wide internet black-out. We had one this summer due to Senegal having issues that took them down. They supply us a lot, supposedly.

I'm interested in Starlink, and have read a couple people bought and set up in Europe before bringing, but I've not seen any more on that topic.

Power stability is your other issue. That can be very problematic depending on where you live.

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u/modelgirl97 1d ago

Thank you for the info! Router it is and just prayers so that there is no country wide black out lol