Gambian Threepeat

Electoral Services International Inc. (ESI) has the distinct honour to announce that we have been selected to assist the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) in The Gambia with their voter registration for The Gambia’s upcoming 2021 National Elections.

The IEC originally published an open international tender for the biometric voter registration (BVR) exercise in the fall of 2020. ESI was one of the bidders for this original tender. Unfortunately, this competitive tender was cancelled after the bid submission stage. In early 2021, a revised and restricted BVR project tender was published. All of the bidders for the original tender were invited to give the IEC their best offers once again. ESI was thrilled to be awarded this contract after technical and financial evaluations were completed. We look forward to serving the IEC once again.

The project is now underway. The technical meetings are ongoing, the software is being finalized, the hardware is being gathered and will soon be ready for shipment. ESI’s BVR project staff, which includes project management, programmers and onsite project support will be in Banjul (The Gambian capital city) beginning in May 2021. Offsite ESI project support is currently being provided and will also be continuous throughout the exercise.

The “Smiling Coast” has always been good to ESI. Our first biometric journey to The Gambia took place in 2011 when the IEC decided it wanted a more accurate, more reliable voters list. In 2016, ESI had the opportunity to return to Banjul and assist the IEC with yet another BVR endeavor. As they say colloquially, we are going “back-to-back-to-back” with The Gambian IEC in 2021 and ESI is honoured to be doing so.

ESI appreciates the loyalty and trust that the IEC has shown in the past and at present. We anticipate this long-standing relationship to continue to strengthen well into the future. While ESI understands that we still have deliverables to provide and a BVR mission to successfully complete, we are still very thankful.

ESI is looking forward to providing project updates through the ESI website as this exercise progresses.

Electoral Services International Inc. (2021)