Gambia has the highest per capita emigration rate of any African nation; between 2015 and 2020 over 33,000 Gambians, mainly young men, left home in search of better opportunities in Europe, despite the low likelihood of success, and significant dangers.

Since the end of the dictatorship in 2017, thousands of migrants have returned, and the UN is helping them to find jobs and start small businesses, as well as running projects aimed at developing the wider economy, and dissuading others from making the perilous trip by convincing them that they can have succeed at home.

In the fourth episode of our mini-series recorded in The Gambia, Conor Lennon meets a returned migrant making a life for himself and his family in the capital, Banjul, after a traumatic, two-year-long attempt to reach Italy.

Music: Within the Earth, Ketsa