Music of the Gambia for an international competition to produce an anthem (and flag) before independence from the United Kingdom in 1965. The Gambia, the smallest country in mainland Africa, is an independent coastal state along the River Gambia. It gained its separate identity as a colony of the United Kingdom while Senegal was a colony of France, but the two countries' traditional music are very much intertwined. Among Gambia's people, who together number some 1.728 million (2010), 42% are Mandinka, 18% Fula, 16% Wolof\Serer, 10% Jola and 9% Soninke, the remainder being 4% other African and 1% non-African (2003). 63% of Gambians live
West African Airways Corporation West African Airways Corporation West African Airways Corporation, or WAAC for short, was an airline that operated from 1946 to 1958, jointly owned by the governments of Britain's four west African colonies, namely The Gambia, the Gold Coast (now Ghana), Nigeria, and Sierra Leone. The carrier was headquartered at the "Airways House" in Ikeja, Nigeria, and operated from its hub in Lagos Airport. It was dissolved on , after all the shareholder countries but Nigeria set up their own national airlines following their independence. As the sole remaining major stockholder of the airline, the government of Nigeria continued to operate