Tap water in Gambia

Not safe to drink

This reflects the CDC's travel health guidance for Gambia; no WHO coverage figure is published for this country. National figures describe a country, not the tap in front of you.

What the sources say

US CDC Travelers' Health

Advises travellers that tap water is generally not safe to drink in Gambia.

Numbeo

25.0/100 on the water drinkability and accessibility index, which Numbeo reads as “Low”. This one is crowdsourced from residents rather than measured.

Lonely Planet

Water is not considered safe to drink in The Gambia. It's best to boil, filter or chemically treat water (ie with iodine tablets) before drinking. Bottled water is widely available – though the environmental impact of all the discarded plastic is considerable.

This is a national picture, and it varies. Some cities treat their water to a standard the country as a whole does not reach. Where the water is not safe, boiling, filtering or sealed bottles are the usual options, and ice and raw salad washed in tap water carry the same risk as the water itself.

What bottled water costs you here

Drinking tap water instead of bottled would save one adult about 613$ a year in Gambia, and keep several hundred plastic bottles out of circulation.

Work out your own saving

Elsewhere in Africa