There have been four major floods in Lagos, Nigeria’s economic hub, over the past 14 years. The floodwaters swamp the open-air markets of Oshodi, one of the city’s largest informal trading centres, and rise through the stilted walkways of Makoko, a waterfront community of about 100,000 people built over the Lagos Lagoon. This disrupts the livelihoods of thousands of market traders, street vendors, waste recyclers and artisans.
These informal traders, most of them women, sell fish and other food, textiles, tools and household goods from stalls. They survive on daily, irregular incomes with no contracts, insurance or savings to fall back on when disaster strikes.
Each set of floods is devastating. The 2012 floods displaced an estimated 2 million people in the Lagos area alone. The 2019 floods also caused severe community displacement across Lagos’s informal settlements. The 2022 floods affected more than 24,000 households in Lagos State, with over 1.3 million people displaced across Nigeria. And the 2022-23 floods displaced about another 8,000 residents in Lagos State. Informal settlements and open-air markets were among the hardest-hit areas.
