A delegation of 15 Gambian senior officials visited the ICMPD Brussels Mission on 19 February to learn more about the MPF and the Rabat Process as part of activities of the Migration Management for the Gambia Programme, coordinated by the UNU-MERIT Maastricht University through the Migration Partnership Facility.
The participants represented several ministries and government departments in The Gambia with a direct link over migration management, including the Department of Immigration and of Labour, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the National Intelligence Service.
The field visit finalised the two-week study programme which includes subjects such as Migration Studies, Migration Data, International Migration Law, Smuggling and Trafficking, Return and Reintegration, Policy Coherence and Migration and Development. The courses were tailored to the specific reality of the migration landscape in the Gambia, a country with one of the highest pro capita migration rates in Africa and with a strong interest for migration towards Europe. The course content was conceived by the Maastricht University team in collaboration with the Government of Gambia to ensure a curriculum which will benefit the most the target group and their learning needs.
During the field visit, participants had the opportunity to become familiar with the perspectives on migration from supranational (e.g., EU) bodies and from multi-level governance bodies (regional level), ask questions and receive detailed insights into how different EU agencies work. The overall aim of the field trip was to expose participants to different migration management practices in a way that would not be possible in a traditional classroom.
The two-week study programme is a specific component under the umbrella of several training components that together form the Migration Management Diploma Programme (MMDP), which has been funded through the MPF since 2020. The programme aims to create a shared understanding of the multifaceted topic of migration among public officials from priority partner countries to enable a greater degree of cooperation and collaboration between partner countries and the EU and EU Member States; and relies on an interactive teaching approach in which lectures, workshops, hands-on activities, group work, and other forms of knowledge exchange encourage participants to be both active recipients and creators of knowledge.
The successful programme has created an active network of alumni that are based in priority partner countries for the EU and EU Member States. The overall interest in the different components continue to increase, with a doubling of applications for the next batch of in-person training in Maastricht which kicked-off on 10 March 2025. Graduates from past editions have described their experience as “transformative” as can be learned from testimonials on the MPF website.