“What happened is unity,” said Jeffrey Smith, founder of Vanguard Africa, a political consultancy and nonprofit group that supported Mr. Barrow in the campaign. “That is precisely what is needed to take down highly entrenched regimes.”

Celebrations kicked off yesterday afternoon in the small west African state after Yahya Jammeh conceded to Adama Barrow in an unprecedented move for a Gambian head of state.

“This is absolutely momentous for Gambia,” said Jeffrey Smith. “[It is] a stunning rejection of abuse, of dictatorship. Thousands of people bravely put their lives on the line to oust someone who had abused them with impunity for decades.”

“It’s still a tense situation. We're not yet out of the woods. People are in the streets celebrating,” says Jeffrey Smith, a human rights activist and executive director for Vanguard Africa, a Washington-based nonprofit that worked with The Gambia's opposition coalition.

"(Barrow) was absolutely thrust into this position," said Jeffrey Smith, founding director of the advocacy group Vanguard Africa. "He took hold of that leadership and played a seminal role in rallying the disparate opposition leaders around him."

Jeffrey Smith, a human rights activist and founding director of Vanguard Africa, a US-based group which worked with the opposition coalition, said that if Mr Jammeh “can be defeated at the ballot box ... then anyone can”.

"This is going to have resonance way beyond the tiny borders of Gambia," human rights activist Jeffrey Smith told the wire service. He called this "a momentous occasion for the region writ large."

Jeffrey Smith, executive director of Vanguard Africa, told Africa Times that he was “equally inspired by the energized coalition and terrified for their safety,” particularly as Gambians voted Thursday with Internet, electricity and international phone service cut off, and a heavy security presence at the polls.

“Gambians were tired of dictatorship, tired of being poor, tired of being a pariah in the region,” said Jeffrey Smith, founding director of Vanguard Africa, a nonprofit organization that has worked closely with the opposition. “It’s certainly a shot across the bow for entrenched, abusive governments across Africa.”

Jammeh's ouster demonstrates that even Africa's most entrenched leaders can be brought down if opposition politicians overcome their divisions, said Jeffrey Smith, a human rights activist and founding director of Vanguard Africa, a U.S.-based group that worked with Gambia's opposition coalition.