The Gambia President Adama Barrow changed the name back to "Republic of The Gambia". Arab traders provided the first written accounts of the Gambia area in the ninth and tenth centuries. During the tenth century, Muslim merchants and scholars established communities in several West African commercial centres. Both groups established trans-Saharan trade routes, leading to a large export trade of local people as slaves, also gold and ivory, as well as imports of manufactured goods. By the 11th or 12th century, the rulers of kingdoms such as Takrur, a monarchy centred on the Senegal River just to the north, ancient Ghana and
Prevalence of female genital mutilation by country (see page 8). In 2015, Gambia's president Yahya Jammeh has banned FGM. In 2014 The Girl Generation, an Africa-led campaign to oppose FGM worldwide, was launched. Although estimates of the prevalence of FGM vary, sources have consistently found the practice to be undergone by the majority of women in the Horn of Africa, in the West African countries of Guinea, Sierra Leone, Gambia, Mauritania, Mali and Burkina Faso, as well as in Sudan and Egypt. Of these countries, all have laws or decrees against the practice, with the exception of Sierra Leone, Mali and some states of Sudan. Infibulation, the