Africa needs to find ways to enable its population to lead better lives. This includes access to healthy and sustainably produced food. This policy paper takes a closer look at the role of synthetic fertilizers in African food systems.
This publication explores Abuja's evolution from a symbol of Nigerian unity to a city facing challenges of unplanned urban sprawl resulting in evictions and uncertainty. It discusses the need for a review of the Abuja Master Plan, emphasizing inclusive development, affordable housing, streamlined governance, and participatory planning as key recommendations.
The Pesticide Atlas is a comprehensive overview of facts and figures on global pesticide production and consumption, its impact on people, biodiversity and the climate, and alternative solutions.
This four–chapter booklet introduces the concept of a Fair Shared City and outlines how this concept has been implemented in Oworonshoki Community in Lagos while providing a planning checklist for other communities who wish to adopt this inclusive model of urban planning.
Considering the danger of Highly Hazardous Pesticides, especially to women farmers, the Smallscale Women Farmers Association in Nigeria (SWOFON) conducted a snapshot survey of pesticide usage among its members. The survey is aimed at evaluating the potential pesticide-related risk to women farmers as well as aiding in informed advocacy for better food and human safety policies.
Nigeria’s nuclear power ambitions pose several essential questions: One of which is how the introduction of nuclear energy would help address the electricity gap and how it compares to alternative energy pathways in terms of cost, reliability, and ability to combat climate change, considering current global energy trends. We sponsored the 72nd edition of the Power Dialogue hosted by Nextier Power to discuss these issues with relevant experts in the field.
Clean Technology Hub, with support from Heinrich Böll Stiftung, has developed a policy proposal for the Delta State Government to adopt a renewable energy policy roadmap that will serve as a blueprint to achieve the state’s vision for access to electricity, climate resilience, and economic growth beyond oil.
Heinrich Böll Stiftung (HBS) and the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID) partnered to host a public dialogue on climate finance, pertaining to how Nigeria can mobilise more resources to migate and adapt to the devastating impacts of climate change. The public dialogue also served to launch the report, “Unlocking Climate Finance for Nigeria: Between Aspirations and Realities”.
The urban development policies of Lagos seem to be predominantly shaped by concepts that reflect dominant gender inequality and stereotypes. This position paper written in collaboration with Fabulous Urban Nigeria Foundation explores a feminist approach to city planning that would benefit everyone.
This Publication, commissioned by HBS Abuja office and actualized by Lagos Urban Development Initiatives, seeks to encourage readers to drive a public conversation about the potential of ignored citizens from all spheres, to re-imagine their city, and to effect equitable changes that will be inclusive and benefit of all.
The Nigerian government has raised billions of naira to finance energy and land-use projects using green bonds. This report hopes to make a meaningful contribution towards ensuring that mechanisms for transparency, accountability, sustainability and value for money are put in place throughout the processes of green bond issuances in Nigeria.
In this infographics publication, Action Aid analyzes to what extent Nigeria is financing climate resilient agriculture through its budget and the potential consequence on smallholder women farmers who are more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change; while also proffering recommendations to improve sustainable agriculture in Nigeria.
The business of the AIIB is the financing of large infrastructure projects such as power plants, dams and transport routes. Such investments are inherently associated with high environmental and social risks, as well as corruption and high levels of debt. This study provides an overview of the institution's close alignment with China and its transparency and information disclosure rules.
This second volume of our Nigerian pesticides study provides evidence to support a process of withdrawing highly hazardous pesticides from the Nigerian market, based on their toxicity to human health and the environment, and to promote safer alternatives to chemical pesticides for crop and pest management.
This report analyses the provision of urban services in the low-income community of Otumara, Lagos, with a focus on water supply, examining the relevant actors, actor constellations and modes of interaction.
This study focuses on the dimensions of traditional and governmental urban processes in Onitsha, Anambra State, using access to water as a case example.
This study reveals how Brigade-Tudun Wada community in Nassarawa State is able self-organize to access water even after the community stopped getting water from the public tap system more than two decades ago.
The paper explains how Community Development Associations (CDAs) could fill the vacuum in local urban governance created by the dysfunctionality of the third tiers of government in Nigeria, the local governments.
This special edition of Perspectives reflects on, analyzes and documents the evolution of African feminisms and feminist action that African activists have taken up to address both old as well as persistent and new threats to women’s rights and gender justice. It also reflects on lessons learned from African feminist practices for current and future generations across the region.
While this report looks at the impact of incomes and poverty on household choices of cooking fuels, it also explores the hypothesis that fuel substitution is not necessarily perfect and that households often use multiple fuels together.
This report provides a critical review of Nigeria’s clean-cooking policies, the relevant institutions and outlines the current challenges that need to be overcome.
What needs to be done differently to overcome the longstanding inertia in the household-energy sector and facilitate a clean-cooking transition for the energy-poor majority? To answer this question, we undertook a political economy analysis of the clean cooking sector.
This policy review identifies key health sector legislation, policies, regulations and guidelines, and calls for the integration and deployment of decentralised and clean energy solutions in the electrification of primary health care facilities across Nigeria.
The University of Lagos Centre for Housing Sustainable Development supported by Heinrich Böll Stiftung Nigeria partnered with community members to prepare this Resilience Action Plan for the Ajegunle-Ikorodu community in Lagos to prevent, anticipate and respond to shocks and stresses from both natural and man-made occurrences.
This policy brief examines the pre-existing Nigerian economic vulnerabilities, evaluates the government’s responses to the COVID-19 pandemic with regards to achieving a green and more-diversified economy, and develops a new agenda and strategies for sustainable growth and economic transformation.
The Project Debt Relief for Green and Inclusive Recovery was conceived in the summer of 2020 to advance innovative solutions to address the sovereign debt crisis that many countries in the Global South are facing at a time when social progress is under threat and urgent climate action is needed.
As Nigeria pushes its agricultural sector towards more efficient production and a greater role in the country’s economic diversification strategies, this study surveys the pesticides that are currently in use, their effects on humans and the environment, and how policy influences pesticide use.
In Nigeria, the healthcare system was not prepared for the Covid-19 pandemic. Read more about how the pandemic affected a country where more than half the population lacks access to primary medical care while Nigerian doctors seek employment abroad.
This publication debunks a series myths and stereotypes that have dominated the debate on Lagos urban development for decades, and offers reflections on how to make the city more inclusive and climate resilient.
In addition to the hard facts, data and figures telling the story of plastic from a global perspective, the Nigeria edition of the Plastic Atlas provides insights into the particular challenges facing Africa’s most populous country.
This report by the Paradigm Initiative explores the state of digital rights and data privacy in Nigeria. It outlines how personal data is collected and retained, and how privacy can be breached by both private and state actors.
This special edition of Perspectives was compiled with the Heinrich Böll Foundation’s North Africa offices and the Transform Africa project. It is dedicated to the emerging conversation of alternative approaches that challenge the historical bias towards the industrialisation of agriculture and the food system as the main strategy to address food insecurity while preparing for a +2°C world.
Ambitious, sophisticated, and resolutely grounded in everyday realities, "Free, Fair and Alive" present a compelling vision of a future that can actually work. Written by two highly experienced commons activists, this book is at once a penetrating cultural critique, table-pounding political treatise, and practical playbook for building a new world of commoning.
This is a study report that examines the deplorable energy situation faced by Nigerian Primary Health Centres as well as the possibilities of improving clean energy access to the health centres through responsible fiscal policies targeted at off grid electricity.
A publication that highlights the economic implication of the proposed Cross River Super Highway whilst proposing alternatives that will be more economically beneficial to the State and its residents.
This edition of Perspectives tackles questions of state capture, and how the concept can contribute to understanding and strengthening democracies across Africa. Our contributors also open the possibilities that emerge when “state capture” is released from particular institutional settings and national boundaries
Against a background of political and cultural disruption, Perspectives approached writers to inquire, speculatively or not so speculatively, into an African future. The result is an eclectic mix of contributions and conversations across the arts, culture, philosophy and politics. They offer glimpses of African futures – fantastic, idealistic, or sober, but always self-confident – that place the continent at the centre of a world to come.
This edition of Perspectives seeks to shed new light on aspects of the movement of African migrants that have remained on the margins of discussion, and to place the pressures experienced in Europe within a broader perspective.
The OCL 2018 publication is a collation of the thoughts and ideas of researchers, urbanists and creatives who were invited to think critically about urban resilience. The publication explores resilience in its diverse forms, mechanisms and outputs. It also highlights important factors that influence urban resilience considerations and uses a people-centred lens to zoom in on the complexities and implications of embracing resilient frameworks in city planning.
The revised, second edition (2018) of “Urban Planning Processes in Lagos” is the result of a yearlong research process that examines the relation between urban policies, urban interventions, the role of governance, and the different actors in Lagos. The publication shows that Lagos urban policies do not often benefit those at the centre of economic development: the Lagosians – of which a significant number lives below the poverty line.
This edition of Perspectives seeks to explore how actors in the state, political parties, and civil society have been able to make those in government less certain about the future balance of power through and outside of the ballot box.
Which African leaders qualify as an icon? Perhaps this is always a controversial question, but it was much easier to answer, say, 25 years ago, when the public memories of Pan-Africanist champions such as Kwame Nkrumah and Julius Nyerere were still fresh, Nelson Mandela had just walked out of prison, and Robert Mugabe was a widely respected leader.
Industrial agriculture is responsible for both colossal environmental and climate damage as well as global injustice. It is high time for a socially and politically oriented regulation of the agrifood industry. We hope that this atlas will stimulate a broad-based social debate on this vital topic.
This edition of Perspectives contributes to the ongoing debate on infrastructure development in Africa by sharing snapshots of experience from around the continent, exploring questions about democratic participation, the role of human and environmental rights, and economic transformation.
How should the ‘Giant of Africa’ develop, and what role should the ‘Power House of Europe’ play in this development, if any? It is in the search for practical approaches to a development that has the majority citizens as its centre that the Nigeria Office of the Heinrich Böll Foundation commissioned this paper. This paper is meant to spell out the private sector view on people-oriented development, and it was developed in collaboration with the Nigerian Economic Summit Group, NESG, as the main private sector platform of Nigeria.
