Latest Publication

Abuja for All Cover Page

Abuja, A City for All

Publication
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.
Plastic Atlas Cover Page

Pesticide Atlas - Nigeria Edition

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.
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The Fair Shared City Approach to Urban Community Development

Publication
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.
SWOFON COVER PAGE

Pesticide Use Among Small Scale Women Farmers

Survey Report
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. 
Meeting Nigeria's Electricity Needs

Meeting Nigeria's Electricity Needs: Is Nuclear an Option?

Event Report
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.
Policy Roadmap Cover Page

Delta State Renewable Energy Policy Roadmap

Policy Proposal
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.
Unlocking Climate Finance

Unlocking Climate Finance for Nigeria

Communiqué
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”.
Cover Image Fair Shared City

Fair Shared City: Lagos

Position Paper
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.
Flaneuse Cover photo

Flaneuse - Envisioning a City for All

Publication
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.
Green Bond Report Cover Page

Nigeria's Green Bond Programme

Report
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. 
Time for a "Detox" in Agriculture

Time for a “Detox” in Agriculture

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.
Perspective Front Cover

Perspectives #01/2021: African Feminisms Across Generations

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.
Expanding Demand for Clean-Cooking in Nigeria

Expanding Demand for Clean-Cooking in Nigeria

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.
Resilience Plan Cover Page

Ajegunle-Ikorodu Community Resilience Action Plan

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.
Cover Page

Agenda for Sustainable Economic Transformation in Nigeria

Policy Brief
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.
Cover Page

Debt Relief for Green and Inclusive Recovery

Report
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.
Cover Page

Time for a "Detox" in Agriculture

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.
Covid-19 Pandemic

Covid-19 Pandemic Case Study: Nigeria

Case study
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.
Plastic Atlas Nigeria

Plastic Atlas (Nigeria Edition)

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.
Digital Rights Report Cover

Digital Rights and Privacy in Nigeria

Report
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.
Perspectives #02/2019: Ecological and Social Transformation in Africa: Rethinking food systems for a +2°C world

Perspectives #02/2019: Ecological and Social Transformation in Africa: Rethinking food systems for a +2°C world

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.
Free, Fair and Alive Cover

Free, Fair, and Alive: The Insurgent Power of the Commons

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.
Perspectives

Perspectives #01/2019: Robbin’ the Hood: Inquiries into State Capture

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

Perspectives #03/2018: Through the Looking Glass: Images of African Futures

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.

Open City Lagos (2018 edition): Resilience

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.

Urban Planning Processes In Lagos

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.

Perspectives #03/2017: The (Un-) Making of Icons in Africa

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.

AGRIFOOD ATLAS

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.

Perspectives #02/2017: Putting People Back Into Infrastructure

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.

Marshall Plan for Nigeria NESG Report

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.

Perspectives #01/2017: South Africa: Emerging Power or Fading Star?

Informed by the discussions at an international conference jointly organised by the German Development Institute, the Heinrich Böll Foundation and Stanford University on “Emerging Power or Fading Star? South Africa’s Role on the Continent and Beyond”, held 12–14 July 2016 in Cape Town, the articles gathered in this edition of Perspectives shed light on some of the nuances and challenges that define South Africa’s place in the world today.

Security as a Commodity: Mega Events and Public Security in Brazil

The private security industrie is definitely among the sectors that most benefit from mega events. Within a dubious relationship the security industry does not only supply the Brazilian State with surveillance systems and weapons, it also influences the organization of federal police and military forces.

Private Games?

The Rio Olympics have already cost more public money than official numbers show. An analysis by Julia Bustamante and Caio Lima, Instituto Políticas Alternativas para o Cone Sul (PACS).

Perspectives #02/2016: Laughing Out Loud - The Politics of Satire in Africa

When you write about Africa, make sure to always include sad and starving characters, advises Kenyan author Binyavanga Wainana in his famously ironic essay “How to write about Africa”, which takes aim at Western prejudices. In the same way that everyday laughter has been excluded from all-too-familiar depictions of the continent, African humour and satire as a form of social and political engagement remains underexplored.