New National Standard
Building the values that make every institution work
Every hospital, school, road, and institution the NBP intends to build will only work as designed if the people who run them take their responsibilities seriously. The Gambia's development challenges are not only physical. A civic culture where littering is normal, where public servants treat their positions as personal privileges, where ethnic loyalty routinely outweighs national identity, makes every reform harder to deliver and less durable once delivered. These patterns are not fixed. Countries including Singapore, Rwanda, and Botswana have changed their civic cultures deliberately, through sustained government investment in shared values. The National Builders Party will make that same investment in The Gambia.
Imagine a Gambia where patriotism is expressed through action rather than sentiment, where young people take pride in clean streets because they know those streets belong to them, where public servants arrive on time because punctuality is a professional obligation and not an aspiration, and where a person who builds a business from nothing is celebrated as much as the person who secures a government post. The New National Standard will embed these values in every classroom, every government office, and every community across the country, producing a generation that does not know a Gambia without them.
The NBP will embed the ten New National Standard values in every school from Grade 1 through Grade 12.
A dedicated New National Standard curriculum strand, designed by the National Council for Cultural and Historical Preservation in partnership with the Ministry of Education, will be taught as a mandatory subject at every level. Primary students will learn what it means to care for their community and why honesty matters. Secondary students will study the Constitution, the rights and duties of citizens, and how the values apply to real governance challenges. New National Standard content will also be woven into science, entrepreneurship, history, and physical education so that the values are reinforced across the full school experience.
The NBP will assess every school in The Gambia annually on New National Standard delivery.
A New National Standard Schools Assessment will be conducted each year by the Ministry of Education across all public and registered private schools. The assessment will measure the quality of curriculum delivery, the visible culture of the school environment including cleanliness and orderliness, and the engagement of the school community with the values. Results will feed directly into teacher training priorities and school improvement plans, ensuring that the standard is not just policy on paper but a lived reality in every classroom.
The NBP will launch a national campaign on radio, television, and social media to build civic pride across the country.
In Year 1, the NBP will publish the full New National Standard, defining all ten values with specific meanings and the behaviors that reflect each one. The National Civic Pride Campaign will carry these values into homes, markets, mosques, churches, and community spaces. Community Champions in every district will be recruited and supported to model and promote the standard locally, connecting the national programme to the everyday experience of Gambians where they live.
The NBP will establish enforceable standards for the cleanliness and quality of every public space in urban and peri-urban Gambia.
A national Public Space Standards Code, enforced through the Public Space and Civic Environment Authority and local government councils, will define minimum standards for cleanliness, maintenance, and aesthetic quality across all public areas. A national anti-littering enforcement programme combining public education and consistent enforcement will address one of the most visible everyday violations of the standard. A national beautification programme will fund tree planting, public art, landscaping, seating, lighting, and waste bins in communities across all administrative regions.
The National Builders Party will make the ten New National Standard values a binding condition of employment for every civil servant in The Gambia.
A Public Service New National Standard Charter, published by the Office of the President and forming part of every civil servant's terms of employment, will define the specific behavioral obligations that apply to each of the ten values. All new civil servants will complete a New National Standard orientation as part of initial training. Annual performance reviews will assess conduct against Charter obligations alongside professional targets. Senior leadership training delivered through the National Think Tank Centre will model the values from the top of the civil service downward.
The NBP will give every Gambian a formal route to report public servant conduct that falls below the New National Standard.
A Public Conduct Reporting Mechanism, operated through the Public Space and Civic Environment Authority and the Anti-Corruption Commission, will allow citizens to report specific instances of misconduct including rudeness, deliberate delay, and solicitation of unofficial payments. Reports will be investigated within defined timelines and outcomes communicated to the complainant and the relevant institutional head. An annual Public Service Conduct Report will publish aggregate data by ministry, creating public accountability for the culture of every government institution.
The NBP will measure civic culture change every year using a published national index developed with the Gambia Bureau of Statistics.
The New National Standard Index will draw on an annual national survey measuring citizen attitudes and self-reported behaviors across all ten values, supplemented by observational data on public space conditions and public service conduct. The Index will be published annually and disaggregated by region, age group, and gender so that the programme can target investment where it is needed most. International benchmarking against countries that have undergone successful civic culture transformation will provide context and learning for The Gambia's own progress.
The NBP will report the full results of the New National Standard programme to the National Assembly every year, without exception.
An annual New National Standard Progress Report, presented jointly by the Minister of Culture and the Minister of Education, will summarize Index findings, school assessment results, public service conduct data, and community programme activity. A National Assembly Select Committee on National Values and Civic Culture will review the report and call ministers and officials to account for progress. An independent external evaluation every five years, including international experts and Gambian civil society, will produce a published assessment that the government is required to formally respond to.
For Teachers and Public Servants
Your role is recognized as central to the success of the New National Standard. You will receive proper training in the values, clear behavioral expectations through the Public Service Charter, and positive recognition through the Civil Service Excellence Awards when you consistently demonstrate the standard in your work. How you do your job will matter as much as what you produce.
For Young Gambians
You will grow up in a Gambia where the values that make a society work are taught in your classroom from your first year of school. The New National Standard is designed around your generation. You are not inheriting a broken civic culture and being told to manage it. You are being given the tools and the environment to build a different one.
For Every Family
Cleaner streets, more reliable public services, and public servants who treat you with respect are all direct outcomes of a functioning New National Standard. When civic culture improves, every other investment the NBP makes in healthcare, education, and infrastructure becomes more durable. Your community benefits not just from what is built but from how it is maintained and how it is run.
In The Gambia the National Builders Party builds, civic values are not decorative. They are the foundation on which every institution, every public service, and every piece of infrastructure stands. Every Gambian child from Grade 1 onward learns what it means to be a citizen: the rights that belong to them, the duties they carry, and the behaviors that hold a society together. Every civil servant signs a Charter that defines in plain terms how they are expected to conduct themselves and knows that violations carry real consequences. Public spaces are clean and maintained because the government holds them to a standard and because communities have internalized that those spaces belong to them. Civic culture is measured annually, reported publicly, and improved continuously rather than assumed or wished for. The National Builders Party is the government that builds this standard and keeps it.
The New National Standard is the foundation beneath every other promise in this manifesto. You cannot build a nation with infrastructure alone. The National Builders Party will build the human infrastructure too: the values, the habits, and the shared identity that make everything else work and last.
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