Why Adam Grant’s warning about incompetent leadership is a civic alarm for The Gambia as it enters another turbulent election season?

Adam Grant’s provocative argument that democracies must screen out incompetent candidates before they reach the ballot lands with unusual force in The Gambia, where political parties multiply faster than political culture matures and the presidency is often treated as a fantasy prize rather than a disciplined vocation.

As the nation enters another election season, Grant’s thesis forces a difficult question: what happens to a democracy when charisma replaces competence, coalitions replace ideology, and leadership becomes improvisation rather than preparation?

Every political season in The Gambia follows a familiar choreography, new parties, recycled parties, coalitions stitched together overnight, and candidates who emerge from obscurity with grand promises and little preparation.

Yet this year, as the political temperature rises and the nation braces for another contest of personalities, one idea has seized my attention with unusual force: Adam Grant’s argument that democracies must begin screening out incompetent candidates before they ever reach the ballot.

Grant’s thesis is deceptively simple: in every serious profession — medicine, aviation, engineering, law — competence is tested before responsibility is granted. You cannot fly a plane without proving you can land it.

You cannot perform surgery without demonstrating you can save a life. You cannot practice law without passing the bar. Yet in politics, the most consequential profession of all, anyone can wake up, declare themselves a presidential candidate, and demand the nation’s trust without ever proving they can lead, manage, think, or govern.

This insight lands with particular weight in The Gambia, where the political class has expanded faster than the political culture that should discipline it. Since 2016, the country has seen an explosion of political parties, coalitions, and self‑anointed presidential aspirants—many without administrative experience, policy literacy, or even basic civic grounding. Politics has become a refuge for the unemployed, the ambitious, the aggrieved, and the opportunistic.

The presidency, once feared under dictatorship, is now treated as a fantasy prize. Grant’s argument forces us to ask: what would Gambian politics look like if competence, not charisma, were the minimum requirement?

The Gambian political season is often framed as a contest between parties—UDP, NPP, PDOIS, GDC, UNITE, periphery Solasso parties, and the ever‑multiplying independents. But beneath the surface lies a deeper structural problem: the absence of competence filters. Anyone can form a party. Anyone can declare a candidacy. Anyone can claim a mandate. Constrained by law, the IEC cannot screen candidates for ability, only for paperwork.This has produced a political marketplace where individuals with no administrative experience seek the presidency; where candidates who have never managed a village project claim they can manage a nation; where coalitions form without ideological coherence or policy alignment; where parties collapse into personality cults rather than institutions; and where voters are asked to choose between charisma and chaos.

Grant’s “Competence Party”, or more accurately, his “Anti‑Incompetence Party”, is not a literal proposal but a civic provocation. It asks us to imagine a democracy where leadership is earned, not improvised; where candidates demonstrate skill before seeking power; where elections are not auditions for amateurs but selections among prepared leaders. In The Gambia, this provocation is not theoretical. It is urgent.

Grant’s playful suggestion — testing candidates through board games like Clue, Risk, Chess, Monopoly, Scrabble, and Trivial Pursuit — is not about entertainment. It reveals cognitive habits: critical thinking, diplomacy, strategy, economic reasoning, memory, and emotional regulation. Imagine applying this metaphor to Gambian politics.

How many of our presidential aspirants can demonstrate strategic thinking beyond slogans? How many can negotiate without anger? How many understand economic policy beyond populist promises? How many can recall basic civic facts, constitutional provisions, or historical precedents? How many can manage conflict without flipping the board?

Grant’s point is not that board games predict leadership. Incompetence reveals itself quickly under pressure, and democracies must find ways to detect it before it becomes national policy.

In The Gambia, incompetence is often detected only after candidates win — when ministries collapse, budgets leak, institutions weaken, and governance becomes improvisation.

Coalitions in The Gambia have become political shortcuts — ways to combine weak parties into temporary electoral machines. But coalitions without competence are coalitions without direction.

They collapse under the weight of their own contradictions. Grant’s argument exposes the Gambian paradox: we build coalitions to win elections, not to govern nations. This is why coalition governments fracture, coalition promises evaporate, coalition leaders turn against each other, and coalition manifestos read like wish lists rather than policy frameworks. Competence is the missing ingredient — the glue that holds political alliances together.

Grant’s thesis also challenges voters. In The Gambia, voters often choose based on ethnic loyalty, regional identity, personal admiration, party history, or anger at incumbents. Competence rarely enters the conversation. Policy literacy is low.

Civic education is weak. Political debates are shallow. And candidates are rarely tested on their ability to govern. Grant’s argument demands a new civic ethic: voters must ask not who they like, but who can lead. This is not partisan. It is patriotic.
Grant’s “Anti‑Incompetence Party” is not a political party.

It is a warning. It tells us that democracies collapse not only from authoritarianism but also from incompetent leaders who cannot govern, parties that cannot organize, coalitions that cannot cohere, and voters who cannot distinguish charisma from capacity.

As The Gambia heads into another election season, the question is not which candidate will win; voters must decide that, and trusted sources must verify it. The question is whether the nation will finally confront its competence deficit.

Will parties screen their own candidates? Will voters demand proof of ability? Will coalitions prioritize governance over convenience? Will institutions strengthen their filters? Will the political class accept that leadership is a skill, not a birthright?

Grant’s argument is not about America. It is about us. It is about every nation where politics has become theatre and leadership has become improvisation. It is about The Gambia, where the stakes are too high to entrust the future to untested hands. Competence is not elitism. Competence is patriotism. Competence is democracy’s first defense. And incompetence, left unchecked, slowly undoes democracy.

By Alagi Yorro Jallow