Electricity for Makoko
Empowering a thriving community with electricity
MAKOKO
Imagine for a second you are in Lagos, Nigeria. You’re crossing the Third Mainland Bridge into the city. It’s long. The second-largest in all of Africa.
You look off to your right and you see a slum. You can see the floating wood from torn-down houses. People returning from a long day of fishing. Trash catching on the stilts that hold each rickety house up.
You may be able to see little hints of the eco-system inside this town built on fish. The women smoke fish to send to market creating a haze around the town. The kids sell petrol and water to the fishermen as they head out for a long day. Craftsmen build boats, women weave and untangle nets, and traveling shopkeepers sell vegetables, sweets, and snacks. All of this in preparation to start the next day.
What you can’t see is the rising tension between this fishing village and Lagos. Lagos sees Makoko as disposable. The town looks dirty, it’s school children are more often selling petrol than they are studying, and it doesn’t contribute much to Lagos’ economy. The city has proven just how much it doesn’t want Makoko to exist by knocking down village houses and refusing to reply to the community when they ask for the city to stop dumping plastic waste into their…
