By: Haddy Touray
Despite presidential adviser Momodou Sabally’s claim of improved gross national happiness, The Gambia is faltering behind in the 2025 global happiness ranking.
The Gambia has been ranked 117th out of 147 countries in the 2025 World Happiness Report.
Since the release of the 2025 global happiness report, social media platforms were awash with comments such the factors for the Gambia’s low-ranking on the latest world happiness index.
Meanwhile, the report also revealed that Finland topped the chart as the happiest country in the world for the eight consecutive years followed by Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, Netherland, Costa Rica, Norway and Finland.
The report indicated that the happiness level of Gambians is on the downward spiral as the country slipped five points to its current status of 117th position in 2025. In 2024, The Gambia ranked 112th position while it ranked 120 positions in 2019. In 2022, the country ranked 93 and in 2021, it fell to 98 position and in 2020.
The report also revealed that Mauritius is the happiest country in Africa, followed by Libya, Algeria, South Africa, and Mozambique, noting that Gabon, Côte’ d’Ivoire, Congo, Guinea and Namibia came in sixth to tenth to make up the top ten happiest countries in Africa.
The World Happiness Report is a publication that contains articles and rankings of national happiness, based on respondent ratings of their own lives, which the report also correlates with various (quality of) life factors.
