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In June 2025, Time Magazine released a lengthy article featuring
the extraordinary project and team which, in less than ten years, have
transformed Lagos, once a dusty and crime-ridden state, into one of the
top 100 best places in the world to live and do business in. Quality of
air is better than in Paris or London. Unemployment is lower than in
Germany. The state’s GDP is now the first in Africa above Johannesburg,
Cairo, and Pretoria.
In less than ten years the city became the financial and
entertainment center of Africa, with Nollywood becoming bigger than
Hollywood in terms of number of movies and revenue. Crime has almost
disappeared, and a decade of a responsive and accountable government has
raised the revenue per inhabitant to the same level as in China, Brazil
or Poland. In term of people’s happiness, the international happiness
index now places Lagos at the same level as Finland.
We are now in July 2015, ten years earlier, just at the beginning of
that transformation. Lagos is already a megacity of 21 million people
with a strong internal brand. If Lagos was a state in the United States,
its GDP would be higher than the one of 14 other states, including New
Mexico, Delaware, North Dakota.
The GDP of Lagos state alone is already bigger than the GDP of Kenya,
and bigger than the combined GDPs of 25 other African countries. Inside
the federated states of Nigeria, Lagos contributes 25% to the national
GDP (or 32% to non-oil national GDP) while being the smallest of the 36
states.
Lagos is 65% of Nigerian tourism, 50% of national port revenue, over
70% of international air traffic, and 50% of national energy
consumption.
The state economy growth has been estimated to be 7% during the last
three years. Lagos adds 600,000 new inhabitants every year, growing at a
rate of 6 to 8% a year, ten times faster than New York or Los Angeles,
which makes it one of the fastest-growing cities in the world. In the
upcoming year, Lagos is poised to become the third megacity in the world
just after Tokyo and Mumbai.
That’s a solid foundation to build on.
Unfortunately, the huge potential for growth in Lagos is threatened
by the lack of adequate infrastructures and appropriate value systems.
Power supply is erratic and expensive. Cost of electricity represents
20 to 40% of the cost of production in a typical manufacturing company,
more than double what a company in emerging or developed country pays
for the same unit of electricity.
The electricity sector faces chronic shortage and supply
interruption. The state estimates the current power demand to stand
between 5000 to 8000 MW, while the current supply fluctuates between 900
MW and 1200MW, leaving an enormous power gap. Beyond the supply gap,
power transmission and distribution losses are estimated at 40%, almost
four times higher than the rest of the continent losses estimated at
11%.
Over one million cars are on the road everyday in Lagos, transporting
about seven million people over the 9900km of roads. Road
transportation represents 93% of total passengers and good traffic in
the state. At rush hours, it’s almost impossible to move across the
city, making average Lagosian to spend three to five hours in traffic
every day. To achieve an acceptable level of traffic fluidity, it’s
estimated that the state should increase its spending on the
transportation sector from N20 billion in 2008 to N880 billion by 2025.
Current water supply is 1200 billion litres per day, while the demand
is estimated at 3,600 billion litres per day. The current water service
covers only 44% of the state, leaving countless areas with no potable
water supply.
The telecommunication sector has grown rapidly during the last years.
Telephone density is estimated to be around 69% in Nigeria, but is
certainly much higher in Lagos. There are approximately 55 million
Internet users in Nigeria, which means 32.9% penetration rate (the
double of the African average). Like for telephone density, the Internet
penetration is certainly much higher in Lagos, but the city is still
far behind in the league it wishes to play in.
The education sector is slow to adapt to the changes affecting the
economy, and one is consistently exposed to the outcry of employers and
managers regarding skills deficit or insufficient number of skilled
people in the labor market. Currently, the talent deficit represents the
single most threatening factor to the economic growth of the state.
Literacy rate is reported to be above 61% in Lagos, but only 14% of
students are in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics)
faculties. Many sectors like computer sciences, finance,
infrastructures, etc. face huge deficit of skilled people.
People’s creativity and hunger for success is visible at every
encounter and corner of the city; however, lack of appropriate support
system and spaces to harness and channel that energy had induced despair
and fatalism, which seem to have overtaken a big part of people.
A visible disconnect seems to exist between
“the bottom 80%” and
“the top 10%” of the people. The top 10% has the education and the skills to help the bottom 80%, but just don’t care much.
Sadly, the solution to any problem in Lagos seems to be
“to buy,” not
“to invent, create”!
In terms of branding, Lagos still has a very poor external
perception. Because of poor sanitation and hygiene conditions, tourists
and visitors to the state are still recommended to get over five
vaccines before leaving their country, with another lengthy list of
security warnings from their ministries of foreign affairs and friends.
The city is very dusty, and the air pollution is probably one of the
worst in the world after Beijing. With approximately one million cars on
the road each day, and 40% of Nigeria’s total fuel used by the city
residents, Lagos injects about three tons of lead into the air daily.
The state generates over 1.5 million cubic meters of wastewater
everyday, and solid waste is visible at almost all corners of the city.
Sixty-four percent of the state population is living on less than $2 a
day (N270), only 31% have access to formally paid job, and 57% are
reported to be self-employed. The vast majority of the inhabitants are
employed in the informal sector or economy, with scant revenue
undermined by an inflation rate consistently high at or around 10%.
Beneath the surface, the state is awakening to the above challenges, and has set ambitious goals in the
state development plan to create enough wealth during the next ten years to end poverty and bring widespread benefit to all the citizen of the state.
— reduce unemployment rate to 5% or less;
— bring formal paid job rate to 60% of total workforce in the state (from the current 30% rate);
— bring the manufacturing sector from 4% to 43% in the state’s GDP;
— elevate the state annual GDP growth to 7 – 10%.
The official slogan of the state is
“Lagos, a centre of excellence”.
Not a local excellence, but a global excellence, which means sparking
world-class solution to address local needs, and the needs of the world!
The new governor,
Akinwunmi Ambode, has ten year to design, plan, and deliver on the future the most powerful city in Africa deserves.
Mawuna R. Koutonin
Mawuna Remarque Koutonin is an editor of SiliconAfrica.com and
a social activist for Africa Renaissance. Koutonin’s ultimate dream is
to open a world-class human potential development school in Africa in
2017. Follow @siliconafrica on Twitter.
