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Showing posts with label Nigeria. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nigeria. Show all posts
People And Nature ☭ This is the third of three linked blog posts about housing in Nigeria by Tom Ackers It is based on chapters 8 and 11 of his pamphlet, Making Homes and Energy Transition in Nigeria, published today as a free, downloadable PDF on People & Nature. The other posts are here and here.

3-October-2024
Household energy consumption

Household operational energy comprises by far the largest share of Nigeria’s energy use, and most of it is the combustion of solid biomass for home cooking.

A 2023 report by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), compiled in collaboration with the Energy Commission of Nigeria, provides helpful data on energy consumption patterns.

Solar panels being installed. Photo by ISPI On Line

Of the final energy consumed in Nigeria (that is, energy in all forms, at the point of use, whether biomass, fossil fuels, electricity or commercially-produced heat) nearly 50% goes to residential buildings, followed by transport, industry and commercial uses of energy. (These are 2015 data, but the picture is unlikely to have changed significantly since then).

Agriculture uses a tiny 0.4% of final energy, which reflects very low levels of agricultural mechanisation.

The same report assesses Nigeria’s primary energy supply – that is, “raw” energy products, excluding exports and including imports, before e.g. fuel is burned to produce electricity or heat – as follows:

đŸ”„ Forty-five per cent is from bioenergy, mainly wood collected from forests, charcoal, and animal dung for home cooking. Most of this biomass is collected by families themselves, outside the commercial energy system.

đŸ”„ Forty per cent is from crude oil, 13% from natural gas, 1.2% from hydropower, and about 0.6% from other renewables.

In 2015, Nigeria had less than one gigawatt (GW) of installed solar energy capacity, according to the IRENA report.[1] There was no installed wind capacity. There was 1.9 GW of installed large-scale hydropower capacity, and 0.06 GW of small-scale hydro.

On a per-capita basis, Nigeria’s final energy consumption in 2015 worked out at about 11,700 megajoules (MJ) per person per year. That compares to a per-capita final energy consumption in the UK of about 89,500 MJ per person per year.[2] (These figures exclude the energy embodied in imported manufactured goods – very substantial in the case of the UK.)

For comparison, we can refer to the “contraction and convergence” low-energy development path proposed by Arnalf Grubler and his colleagues, that I have cited in the linked post, Nigeria: meeting the need for housing. The study estimates that worldwide, in 2020, final energy consumption was an average of 120,000 MJ per person per year across the global north, and 37,000 MJ per person per year across the global south, those averages obscuring enormous inequalities of energy consumption between and within countries.

Nigeria’s energy mix reflects a paucity of electricity infrastructure. Only about 60% of Nigeria’s population have access to electricity: 90 million people are without access.

Electricity generation for the Nigerian grid is from gasdominated by gas-fired power stations (86%), with large hydropower plants next in second place (14%).

The grid is highly unreliable. Installed on-grid generation capacity is about 13 GW, but peak generation generally “hovers around 4.5 GW”.

The unreliability is caused by failures in the grid network, which itself lacks the necessary capacity, primarily due to under-investment; by irregularities in the supply of gas, breakdowns of machinery, and seasonal water shortages that impact hydropower. Blackouts are a regular occurrence, lasting for several hours.

In consequence, households and businesses depend heavily on back-up generators using diesel and gasoline. This is why oil comprises such a big share of primary energy supply. Electricity is produced less by the national grid, and more by a distributed system of diesel and gas generators.

The IRENA estimate that about 15–20 gigawatts (GW) of off-grid, fossil-based generator capacity was in place in 2015 (they give both values), although they quote another study putting it as high as 30.5 GW. They think that off-grid gasoline and diesel generators provided about 66 Terawatt hours (TWh) (237 petajoules (PJ)) of primary energy in 2015.

A 2021 Climate Change Policy document from the Nigerian government notes that, so long as the electricity infrastructure remains so unreliable, business growth in Nigeria is a double-edged sword. New businesses provide much-needed employment for a growing population, but they also exacerbate the growth in greenhouse gas emissions.

The same report forecast that greenhouse gas emissions from the industrial sector would rise from 4.2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (Mt CO2e) in 2010 to perhaps 14.8 Mt CO2e in 2030, in the absence of measures to decarbonise the energy system or improve energy efficiency.

Focusing again on the residential sector, the main user of energy, the illustration above shows how household energy consumption breaks down according to fuel and according to use.

About 65% of household energy consumption goes to cooking, and a similar proportion comes from biomass combustion.

About 10% of household energy consumption goes to water heating, and about another 10% to lighting. That comparatively high last figure reflects the low penetration of modern LED and energy-saving bulbs in Nigeria; most households use incandescent bulbs. The authors further note that most home appliances are very old and inefficient – some of them recycled cast-offs from rich countries.

Only a very small total amount of energy is consumed by households for space conditioning (i.e. heating and cooling): about 2 PJ a year for the whole country, which is barely visible in the graph.

There is considerable spatial heterogeneity in residential energy use across Nigeria. Specifically, there is a large gap in the scale and nature of energy consumption between rural and urban settings.

So, while 60% of Nigeria’s population as a whole has access to electricity, IRENA estimates rural access to electricity at between 25% and 46%, and levels of urban electricity connection at 84% to 90%. Put another way, 54-75% of rural households and 10-16% of urban households lack access to electricity.

The IEA estimates that only about 10% of people in Nigeria have access to clean cooking, i.e. do not rely on biomass fuels and have access to LPG or electricity for cooking. The IRENA cites alternative estimates of 15% (WHO, World Bank) and 18% (Nigerian National Bureau of Statistics). Only about 6% of the rural population have access to clean cooking, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
Final energy consumption in residential buildings. Source: IRENA (2023)

Biomass cooking is extremely damaging to health. According to the IEA, almost 500,000 people died prematurely in Sub-Saharan Africa in 2018 because of cooking with solid biofuels – “a figure that equals the combined death toll of malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS”.

Biomass combustion is also incredibly inefficient. And it is an even more potent source of greenhouse gas emissions than oil. For example, per unit energy released, even well-dried wood releases more CO2 combustion emissions than coal.

A large part of the biomass used in cooking comes from forest wood collection, which also carries a large environmental impact in the form of deforestation and desertification. Additional drivers of deforestation in Nigeria include expansions in agricultural land and commercial logging.

Economically, according to the IEA, cooking with solid biomass further “incurs a considerable cost in terms of time and income”. On average, globally, for those households that use solid biomass fuels, the household dedicates “1.4 hours a day to collecting fuel, a burden borne primarily by women and children”. (See also here.)

The use of solid biofuels for cooking is rising in absolute terms along with Nigeria’s population, even though the proportion of homes dependent on solid biofuels is falling.

The dominance of biomass cooking in Nigeria is clearly an enormous public health problem – and it is the major spur to electrification.

The fact that 60% of people have access to electricity, while only 10% have access to clean cooking, suggests that the barriers to clean cooking – aside the spatial heterogeneities – are more about economic pressures than just inadequate access to electricity, and the poor reliability of the electricity grid.

Recent findings on the toxicity of gas stoves are important – and they make gas cooking less of an appealing alternative. Nevertheless, those harms pale in comparison to the harms of cooking with biomass.

Nigeria’s energy future

Decarbonising Nigeria’s energy system and its built environment go hand in hand.

However, Nigeria’s energy system is not simply a matter of local interest. Nor is Nigeria likely to be able to source domestically all of the materials, productive capacity, and technological know-how for an energy transition. It will need assistance from abroad.

The previous government of Muhammadu Buhari introduced a “National Climate Change Policy for Nigeria 2021-2030” (revised June 2021), which called for climate change mitigation measures “that will promote low carbon as well as sustainable and high economic growth”.

The transition away from fossil fuels will change the entire form of the Nigerian economy. It means remaking the built environment, the energy system, agriculture, and all forms of production and consumption, on a low-carbon basis – while also ensuring climate resiliency for the future.

It means reconfiguring Nigeria’s built stocks, so as to enable a future with only no-emissions operational flows.


Yet Nigeria’s fossil fuel sector is currently expanding, both in terms of production and domestic consumption.

Two arguments made in favour of this are that it facilitates efficient industrial and economic growth, chiefly by providing foreign capital, and that it frees up natural gas as an alternative to dirty biomass fuels in homes.

On the other hand, Nigerian environmental activists and non-governmental organisations argue that most new investment should go to renewably-produced electricity, and development of the electrical grid, in order to directly address the lack of energy access in the country, and turn the tide against fossil fuels.

The writer and campaigner Nnimmo Bassey, along with other environmental activists and civil society organisations, organised a forum to discuss environmental issues in the run-up to the last general election, in February 2023. Bassey says the meeting was, “shunned by the front-running political candidates” – and that, judging from their public statements, “the parties are all enamoured with rent-seeking from the murky oil and gas sector”.

Primary energy supply (top), and final energy consumption (above), in 2015. Source: IRENA (2023)

At COP26 in 2021, the Buhari government committed to “carbon neutrality” by 2060. Nigeria’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) commits to reduce fugitive methane emissions from oil and gas operations 60% by 2031. According to the IEA, Nigeria’s NDC “includes objectives” consistent with limiting global mean temperature increases to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, and with limiting the increase to 1.5°C.

The Climate Tracker website gives Nigeria an overall rating of “almost sufficient”, citing continued “mixed messages on energy priorities”. They think Nigeria’s policies and targets “represent a fair contribution to limiting global warming with its own resources”. But to reduce emissions to a level actually consistent with 1.5ÂșC, “it needs to decarbonise its economy and will require international support to do so”.

The Paris Agreement and its NDCs are based on territorial emissions, and they focus on greenhouse gas reductions to the exclusion of other environmental indices. In Nigeria, so long as fossil fuel extraction remains, so too will ongoing environmental and social catastrophes – regardless of where those fossil fuels are finally combusted, and regardless of what comes next in the way of a domestic green transition.

Nigeria’s NDC objectives were developed in the Energy Transition Plan (ETP), launched by the Buhari government in November 2022.[3] Parallel to the ETP is a “Nigeria Integrated Energy Plan” (NIEP, January 2022), outlining electrification and clean cooking pathways to 2030.

The ETP website makes a clear case for the 2060 carbon neutrality goal: “Desertification in the north, floods in the centre, pollution and erosion on the coast and the associated socio-economic consequences all allude to the reality and grave impacts of climate change. Consequently, bold action to limit the impacts of climate change must be undertaken urgently.”

The Plan’s main objectives are: lifting 100 million Nigerians out of poverty; economic growth; bringing universal access to “modern energy services”, with universal access to electricity by 2030; managed decline of the oil sector, while retaining natural gas as a “transitionary fuel”; “fair, inclusive and equitable energy transition” across Africa; and streamlining all domestic energy transition initiatives.

Access to electricity is front and centre. The 2030 goal means massively extending, and strengthening, the present electricity infrastructure, and the scale of electricity generation, and doing so very rapidly.

The Plan seeks to replace 75% of traditional firewood stoves by 2030, with 50% of households on natural gas instead. In 2050, it sees 65% of households with electric or biogas cookstoves, rising to 100% by 2060 – across urban and rural locations.

Recent analysis by the Africa Policy Research Institute characterises this as the previous government’s “elaborate climate and energy transition architecture”. But it concludes that it is “hamstrung by internal inconsistencies and competition among line agencies for control over different policy aspects.”

The current president, Bola TinĂșbĂș, appears to remain onboard with the ETP – at least formally – but he chooses to emphasise the continued role for the oil and gas sectors within the ETP.

Alarmingly, TinĂșbĂș’s oil minister, Heineken Lokpobiri, recently declared that the Nigerian government only wanted an energy transition on the basis of an enlarged fossil fuel sector:

Africa, including Nigeria, cannot hastily transition with aid or grants. What we need is a strategic investment in our fossil fuels sector to bolster our economy and ensure energy security. 

He said that “Nigeria recognises the need to rely on its fossil fuels to finance this transition.”

The Carbon Tracker website notes: “the energy transition by Nigeria’s executive branch remain ambiguous with a strong focus on continuing oil and gas development after the election of President Bola TinĂșbĂș.”

⚫The arguments about Nigeria’s strategies for energy supply to households pit powerful interests in government and corporations, who emphasise the role of fossil gas, against environmentalists and social movements who point to the urgent need to invest in the electricity network, in order to realise the tremendous potential of solar power and other renewable energy sources.

⚫For much more on those arguments, see Making Homes and Energy Transition in Nigeria, by Tom Ackers (a free, downloadable PDF), and linked posts: Nigeria: meeting the need for housing and Nigeria: towards sustainable homes for all.

References.

[1] Analysis by Bloomberg points to a rapid expansion of solar power capacity in the next few years.

[2] Author’s calculation based on Energy Consumption in the UK data and UN DESA’s population estimate for 2015.

[3] An outline of the Plan on the government’s website, and a prospectus for investors, seems to be all that is publicly available.

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Nigeria 🏘 Bringing Energy To Homes

People And Nature ☭ This is the second of three linked blog posts about housing in Nigeria by Tom Ackers. It is based on chapter 6 of his pamphlet, Making Homes and Energy Transition in Nigeria, published today on People & Nature (as a free, downloadable PDF). The other posts are here and here.
3-October-2024

There are many ways to reduce the embodied climate impact of construction (that is, to reduce the embodied greenhouse gas emissions – those generated by the construction, maintenance, and eventual demolition of a building, in contrast to the operational emissions produced during a building’s use).

Construction in progress. Photo by Akintunde Akinleye

Take, for example, the embodied emissions of the Lagos reference building discussed in the previous post, Nigeria: meeting the need for housing. Here, the most important factor would be minimising the emissions from standard concrete and steel, but also minimising the lifetime need for recurrent fresh coats of paint. (Metal and paint manufacture are also chemically polluting in other respects.)

One way to reduce cement and steel emissions is to switch to renewable energy, something that needs to happen anyway across the whole of society.[1]

But Isidore Ezema and his colleagues note an unfortunate backwards step: in 2016 the main cement company in Nigeria – presumably, Dangote Cement – “announced a switch from the use of natural gas and low pour fuel oil (LPFO) to coal as the main energy source for cement production”.

This means that the energy-related emissions of producing cement will have risen. And that is just a small part of the problem. The larger challenge, in the production of both steel and cement, comes from their process emissions – the ones that are produced as a chemical by-product of manufacture.

These process emissions are usually categorised as hard to abate: that is, there is no straightforward replacement for the carbon-heavy methods used. (See my previous pamphlet for an overview of options for decarbonising cement and concrete, and decarbonising steel.)

With regard to steel, low-carbon steel manufacture requires enormous levels of capital investment, quantified in trillions of dollars. This therefore undermines the profit structures of a highly competitive world market for steel, and is unlikely to be introduced without enormous pressure from governments.

With regard to cement, there are some promising low-carbon approaches to cement and concrete manufacture. Less promising alternatives rely on CO2 capture and storage (carbon capture and storage, CCS). CCS is unproven at scale, technologically.

Unfortunately, as with steel, the options for wholly low-carbon cement all appear unlikely to be become economically attractive, or even accessible, anytime soon, without massive state assistance.

The crux of the problem for cement is that bog-standard cement is incredibly cheap, and available at local level.

The imperative for cheapness would require high-tech manufacturers of alternatives to scale-up and globalise production and distribution down to the local level, while also foregoing any significant remuneration for their novel intellectual property.

Any viable low-carbon alternatives to cement and concrete will need to be made universally available for off-brand “generic” manufacture, and, even then, subsidised so that they are cheaper than the traditional versions.[2]

Alternatives for cement and concrete might additionally require  a high, globally-enforced carbon price in order to fully displace bog-standard cement and concrete with a no-emissions alternative.

So, to the extent that it requires steel and cement, a mass housing programme in Nigeria would require massive subsidy – and likely still depend to a large extent on emissions-intensive steel and cement.

Depending on how it is used, cement can be replaced with calcined clays, which become cementitious when heated, but do not require such high temperatures as cement. This reduces both energy-based and process emissions.

These natural pozzolans (materials based on silica and aluminium oxides) can be used on their own, or used to replace some of the cement in concrete. This latter method can reduce the embodied emissions of concrete by up to 29%, according to recent research.

Pozzolans are also quite plentiful in Africa, especially in the Rift Valley in the East, and in Nigeria. However, they remain under-utilised. They could reduce the need to import cement from abroad. The previous government’s Energy Transition Plan (discussed in the linked post, Nigeria: bringing energy to homes) proposes using calcined clays as a partial substitute for clinker in cement manufacture.

However, there remains a need in Nigeria, and across all nations, to minimise the need for steel and cement in the first place.

Both materials need to be effectively rationed on a “contraction and convergence” basis, and based on essential needs.

In Nigeria, this means confining the use of emissions-intensive steel and cement to situations where they are strictly necessary – in the delivery of essential high-quality homes and infrastructure.

Other ways to reduce unnecessary construction and embodied emissions include avoiding unnecessary demolition for new construction, re-using materials, and increasing material efficiencies in construction.

No building or infrastructure should be demolished unnecessarily, if it can instead be usefully retained, and (if necessary) retrofitted to improve operational standards such as passive cooling.

“Build light” is an overall ethos. Construction elements can be specified to be less heavy, and to require less structural support, less concrete and steel, and fewer embodied emissions.

Surfaces and materials should specified with a view to minimising the need for maintenance and repair.

Techniques of circular construction will also be vital, with materials maximally recycled and recyclable, and buildings capable of being deconstructed and their components fully reused.

Use of adhesives and paints should be curtailed, in order to facilitate deconstruction and re-use. Use of “self-finishing” materials further reduces the need for painting.

Metals can already be readily recycled – although, like manufacture, that uses a lot of energy. Demolition concrete and cement can be downcycled to provide aggregates for further construction – but the diminution of quality is wasteful in itself, and it should never be assumed that new concrete and cement are required in place of old.

Alternative materials

Low-carbon materials will be crucial for reducing the emissions intensity of construction. Moreover, in many circumstances they will be superior to the mass-produced, imported, mainstream alternatives.

Among the most promising materials, especially for Nigeria, are “traditional” ones such as rammed earth, clays, unfired bricks, stone, and plant-based products such as wood, bamboo, and hemp.

All these have very low embodied emissions (see the materials pyramid mentioned above, and part 8 of Decarbonising the Built Environment: a Global Overview).

Plant-based materials contain biogenic carbon – carbon absorbed from the atmosphere during the plants’ growth phase – and are frequently carbon negative, i.e. they are associated with drawing down carbon from the atmosphere, rather than adding it.

Among these, new forms of mass timber such as cross-laminated timber (CLT) can be very effective for load-bearing structures. Once the emissions from manufacturing are included, CLT remains net negative for greenhouse gas emissions, and a potentially vast storehouse of carbon. CLT can in many instances replace structural steel and reinforced concrete.

Bamboo is a traditional load-bearing material that is grown widely in Nigeria,[3] and can be used instead of structural steel and reinforced concrete in many instances. It grows fast, and therefore absorbs CO2 from the air rapidly, fixing it as biogenic carbon. It can also be processed into CLT – although the additional emissions involved presently take the embodied emissions of bamboo CLT almost as high as those of steel, on a per-kilogram basis.[4]

Hemp is a bit of a wonder material – it grows fast as well, making it an excellent store for carbon from the atmosphere. It can be grown in untilled soils, and is harvestable within just a few weeks. Hemp is excellent at rejuvenating degraded and polluted soils, boosting subsequent crop yields, and can be used in rotation as a “break crop”. It is a very good natural insulation material.

Hemp stalks can additionally be processed into hempcrete, a natural concrete substitute. Though it has only 5% of the compressive strength of traditional concrete, it weighs only about one-seventh as much – good for building light. Its other advantages include high thermal inertia, that it is highly flame-resistant, can be mixed on site and is recyclable. On the downside, hempcrete produces process emissions like cement does. However, these are roughly balanced by the CO2 absorbed by the hemp in its growth phase – making hempcrete roughly carbon neutral at point of construction.[5]

Hemp is perfectly cultivable in Nigeria. At present, though, hemp production, processing, and marketing remain illegal.

CLT or bamboo can be paired quite readily with other plant- or earth-based materials, to provide alternative building systems to conventional steel and concrete. You can even construct highrise buildings out of CLT (albeit with a concrete base, elevator shaft and stair wells in this instance).

Two inter-related threats with regard to using plants for construction in Nigeria, however, are the risk that this will threaten domestic food security, by displacing food crops, and that it could serve to accelerate deforestation.

Food insecurity is already exceptionally high in Nigeria and this has recently worsened, due to food price inflation. Deforestation also remains a severe problem.[6]

Any use of plants in construction needs to be pursued as part of a holistic and sustainable approach to land management and food security, and in the context of a continual expansion of fertile soils and forest cover, in the face of rising temperatures.

One holistic approach might be to limit the use of plants for construction to the scale of forest biomass that is reclaimed from the desert, or saved from domestic consumption through the electrification of cooking.

On the other hand, cultivation of such crops as hemp and bamboo could, in itself, help to remediate degraded land, if pursued in the right way. That way it would be win-win, with construction materials helping to reverse soil depletion, and reinforce food security.

Stone, earth- and mud-based materials are also crucial alternatives to cement and steel.

Ten per cent of Nigeria’s population already live in buildings constructed out of earth- or mud-based materials. Traditional masonry technologies such as adobe, mud blocks, and rammed earth have a long history throughout West Africa – where they are traditionally made out of laterite soils and pebbles, with dung or straw sometimes added.

These materials have often been disparaged as associated with poor moisture performance, poor durability, high maintenance, and low social class. However, earth-based masonry can be an ideal construction material when it is implemented well, due to its high thermal mass and load-bearing potential.

Compressed earth or clay blocks and bricks, unfired and sun-cured, have an important role to play in Nigerian construction. Ideally, cement-based mortars should be avoided, or alternative low-carbon binders used instead.[7]

Stone is a very effective, and ancient, structural material. Depending on the availability of suitable stone, it can replace concrete and steel as a load-bearing material, in full or in part.

For instance, 15 Clerkenwell Close, an award-winning building in London, has a limestone exoskeleton to support the interior structure. Its embodied carbon is apparently 10% of what it would have been if steel and concrete were used instead, with modelled whole life embodied emissions of 335 kgCO2e/m2 – much less than the 589 kgCO2/m2 of whole life embodied carbon for the Lagos housing scheme assessed by Isidore Ezema and colleagues.

More strikingly still, the cost of the outer shell and core of the London building was about 50% of what it would have been, if concrete or steel had been used.[8]

One useful reference for alternative construction materials is a recent study on sustainable building materials in Africa, commissioned by the UN’s One Planet Sustainable Buildings and Construction Programme. Another document, from the UNEP and IEA, gives a global view of sustainable building materials.

Source: Ninni Westerholm (2023), Unlocking the Potential of Local Circular Construction Materials in
Urbanising Africa. (United Nations One Planet Sustainable Buildings and Construction Programme)

That One Planet study advances a good, programmatic concept for high-quality, high-density urban development, consisting of mid-rise residential buildings on the model of Paris and Cairo. The author, Ninni Westerholm, outlines how timber, bamboo, hemp, straw, earth, clays, and stone, could all be deployed to provide mass housing. She emphasises the role of local labour, local materials, circularity, and thermal comfort.

The core load-bearing structure of these 4-to-5 storey housing buildings should be constructed wherever possible from renewable materials, such as high-strength manufactured timber, sourced from sustainably managed forests, the study proposes.

When those materials are not available, steel and/or concrete could be used instead in a measured and efficient way. All load-bearing structures should be designed so that they can be disassembled and re-used.

The “infill” for exterior walls and the façade would use hempcrete or compressed earth bricks – both of which are reusable – with the façade designed to minimise maintenance. Internal walls could similarly use natural, local, reusable materials. Flooring, roofing and other structures would similarly prioritise low-carbon materials and circularity.

All building services, such as plumbing and sanitation, electrical wiring and communications, should be made accessible.

Traditional construction materials and methods are usually less capital-intensive than industrial ones. Irrespective of the high cost of cement in Africa, lower capital-intensity may well make traditional construction processes less profitable and less worthwhile, from the perspective of capital.

Nevertheless, artisanal forms of construction such as those outlined above, are rarely more expensive than prevailing modern methods of construction. The difference is simply that a greater share of production costs go to labour than to capital-intensive industry.

This makes for good sources of local work, and it helps local communities, since a greater proportion of capital spending ends up circulating in the local economy.

Traditional materials can also support the incorporation of local knowledge – for instance, regarding what materials work well locally in relation to factors like climate, and what can be sourced locally. Engaging and elevating local craft skills is of value in its own right.

Traditional and modern industrial methods can used in tandem. They can also be combined, through the use of pre-fabricated units, and “flying factories”.

The One Planet urban construction concept for Africa suggests a division of labour according to capital- and labour- intensity:

The load-bearing and structural elements in a building, the author suggests, would tend to benefit from more industrially-coordinated, capital-intensive methods of construction – and therefore from larger companies bringing in machinery and expertise. Similarly, building services would often be connected by a utility firm or large outside contractor.

On the other hand, all internal walls, non-load-bearing structures, services, and finishing, could be provided by non-industrial and traditional methods. (The author terms this “unskilled labour”, but I think that is inaccurate. In many cases, these are highly skilled, artisanal forms of craft labour.) Modern construction norms would have a role, but they would not dictate the overall programme of construction.

In my view, the economic logic of construction should not be conformed to private profit: the focus instead needs to be on high quality, well-paid jobs – and on putting money into communities.

So long as the cost of imported goods and foreign capital investment can be held down, there is every reason for the Nigerian government to spend its own currency into the economy, on a mass housing programme, so long as this does not push on inflation. (See parts 2 and 3, above.)

Operational emissions and cooling

Finally, there is potential for reducing energy consumption in Nigerian homes, and the resulting operational emissions.

This is not about cutting down on the uses to which people put energy (defined by researchers as final energy use), such as cooking, lighting and heating. This is about providing for people’s needs more effectively and efficiently, reducing the throughput of energy and avoiding waste. (See also Decarbonising the Built Environment, part 9 and part 10.)

Some opportunities for reducing operational emissions while making people’s lives better – including switching to electric cooking – are covered in the linked post, Nigeria: bringing energy to homes. Here I cover an issue that has to be dealt with even as homes are getting built: thermal comfort.

Households in Nigeria presently consume an absolutely tiny quantity of energy on supplemental space cooling in the home. At the same time, global warming is forcing temperatures up to unbearable levels.

Lagos is among the most vulnerable of Africa’s major cities to increases in extreme heat. The need for adequate protections is only increased by the housing deficit, and a rapidly growing urban population.

Demand for air conditioning units across Africa is forecast to rise, as more people gain access to electricity and temperatures increase, according to the UN. It will be tragic if Nigerians are compelled to use air conditioning en masse. Not least, it will needlessly increase people’s need to consume electricity – in a country that will struggle to meet its territorial electricity needs on a renewable basis.

Passive routes to thermal comfort should be emphasised instead. They should be a number one priority in all future housing – with interior temperatures remaining comfortable, without supplemental cooling, and despite rising temperatures outside.

Examples of passive cooling techniques include the use of long eaves and brise soleil, to reduce the amount of sunlight entering a building (solar gain). Windows should be oriented away from the sun.

Passive ventilation is important. It can be achieved by using through winds, cross-ventilation, or the stack effect – where cool air enters at the base of the building and is vented out the top. Wind towers, or wind catchers, are a beautiful example of this technology, which have been around for centuries in North and West Africa, and are now being widely used by contemporary architects. Natural ventilation can be supplemented mechanically, when necessary.

Meanwhile, the use of stone and earth indoors also contribute thermal mass, or thermal inertia, meaning that interiors heat more slowly during the day, and remain cool. Heavily insulated walls and ceilings can also help to retain heat outside.

The housing typology from Lagos, mentioned above, indicates no such features. Existing “modern” buildings such as these will need to be retrofitted to improve thermal comfort, for example, through the addition of brise soleil and external insulation.

All of these things are principles of bioclimatic design. Once again, local and historical knowledge goes a long way, and can be aided by modern engineering.[9]

Urban planning issues

Looking beyond individual buildings, neighbourhoods, cities, and all spaces of habitation should be actively designed to be humane and environmentally friendly. They should be aesthetically pleasing but varied. Neighbourhoods should have varied scales and structure, and be interspersed with plentiful green space.

Plants and water both serve to reduce ambient temperatures, and reduce the urban heat island effect. This is the tendency for urbanised areas to be warmer due to the presence of heat-absorbing urban materials instead of vegetation, and the heat-producing effects of domestic, retail, transport and industrial activities. Vegetation also reduces airborne pollution, supports wildlife, reduces flooding, and benefits people emotionally.

Settlements need to be made climate resilient for the future – necessitating climate-sensitive planning. Existing neighbourhoods will need to be upgraded (or in some cases moved); homes and neighbourhoods will need to be retrofitted – to protect inhabitants from increasingly severe temperatures, and from floods.

In Lagos, flood resiliency is already urgent, with significant and permanent inundation from the sea highly likely by 2050, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Open sewers and poor drainage are among the problems that need to be remedied.

Homes also need renewable sources of electricity, whether from a large-scale grids, or from local mini-grids (see part 16, below).

These are the principles that should be embraced when building Nigeria’s 66 million new homes between now and 2050, at a rate of 2.6 million new homes a year, and in retrofitting existing homes and neighbourhoods.

One obstacle to progress on building is Nigeria’s lack of “overarching strategy” or a unified policy framework around low-carbon buildings, according to the Cities Climate Finance Leadership Alliance (CCFLA). Energy use is regulated, but across different pieces of legislation. Local governments have insufficient funds to suitably train staff.[10]

The challenges are especially evident in Lagos, with its enormous housing backlog, continued rapid expansion in slum occupancy, and its coastal location.

Politicians and planners will need to find ways to rehouse slum populations in humane and well-provisioned urban neighbourhoods – with genuinely participatory and people-centered “slum upgrade” programmes. A wider and more holistic approach is required to the coastal environment of Lagos.

In my view, it looks very unlikely indeed that decent homes and neighbourhoods can simply be erected on the water.

KunlĂ© AdĂ©yáșčmĂ­, the architect cited in the linked post, Nigeria: meeting the need for housing, won the prestigious Silver Lion prize at the 2016 Venice Biennale of Architecture for his Floating School in MakĂČko, “The Venice of Slums”. An admirable small-scale endeavour in many respects, but “by the time it received this honour,” writes AdĂ©wĂĄlĂ© MĂĄjĂ -Pearce, “the school had already been abandoned due to signs of instability, and was shortly destroyed by a heavy storm.”

A first step, with regard to the wetlands, is that dredging for new developments should be curtailed, if it impacts negatively on the surrounding hydrology and land-use.

Meanwhile, under normal circumstances, notes MĂĄjĂ -Pearce, the wetlands might themselves have helped, “mitigate the effects of global warming, by controlling shoreline erosion, preventing flooding, recharging underground water, and nurturing biodiversity – except that they are now, according to experts, ‘at risk of extinction,’ and this at the very moment when sea levels are expected to rise.”

Urban life needs forms of political economy, and forms of urban planning, based on the delivery of real needs – not a speculative economy built atop an extractive one.

Urban life also needs nature-based planning.

In the case of Lagos, this should encompass the recovery and regrowth of mangroves and other aquatic ecosystems – perhaps deployed in the context of a “sponge city” system of water-management infrastructures.[11]

MĂĄjĂ -Pearce writes that:

first-time visitors to Lagos will be struck by how generally denuded it is of vegetation, as if covering everything in concrete were necessary to hold back the ever-threatening wilderness.

However, between 2010 and 2020, the Lagos State government ran a rare, seemingly good and successful, environmental intervention: a mass tree-planting programme, under which 9.6 million trees were planted. MĂĄjĂ -Pearce notes that:

(s]ince trees trap significant amounts of water, they can be used to clear storm-water runoff, which is reduced by one million gallons for every 1,000 trees.

That could be the model for further, more extensive interventions in greening, rewilding, and natural flood defence.

Two “welcome bulwarks against further degradation” in Lagos, writes MĂĄjĂ -Pearce, are the 20-hectare Lekki Urban Forestry and Animal Shelter, a private venture by the environmentalist Desmond Majekodunmi, and the much larger Lekki Conservation Centre, “which promotes sustainable development and nature conservation, and is home to many endangered species.”

Yet these are far from enough: “relatively small-scale private ventures”.

To fund construction and environmental restoration, Nigeria should aim to finance many of the costs on its own account. (See part 2 of the pamphlet, Making Homes and Energy Transition in Nigeria.)

For that purpose, plant-based and earth-based materials are ideal. They can be sourced locally, or manufactured into prefabricated units – with the whole process taking place within Nigeria.

đŸ”„ See also Making Homes and Energy Transition in Nigeria, by Tom Ackers (a free, downloadable PDF), and linked posts: Nigeria: meeting the need for housing and Nigeria: bringing energy to homes.

Notes

[1] For a general perspective on decarbonising embodied emissions, see Decarbonising the Built Environment: a Global Overview, part 8.

[2] High-tech alternatives to concrete include cementless concretes like Earth Friendly Concrete, and biogenic cements like Biocement. The manufacturers of Earth Friendly Concrete advertise that it has up to 70% less embodied carbon than regular concrete made with traditional cement. Housebuilding in Nigeria would be a prime candidate for such materials.

[3] Nigeria is a member of the International Bamboo and Rattan Organization (INBAR)

[4] For more details, see footnote 5 in Part 8 of Decarbonising the Built Environment: a Global Overview.

[5] Over its subsequent lifetime of use within a built structure, hempcrete (like cement) additionally absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere through the slow process of “recarbonation”. This (unlike with cement) makes hempcrete carbon negative over its whole lifecycle.

[6] This is notwithstanding Nigeria’s participation in the Great Green Wall initiative (see part 1, above).

[7] Compressed mud blocks can be stabilised using cement, and this makes them stronger and more resilient to water. The proportion of cement can vary. However, in order for the blocks to have comparable strength to concrete blocks, the cement content will tend to be roughly the same as what it is in concrete – meaning that the main emissions advantage of using mud disappears.

[8] The London building nevertheless used some concrete in the rest of the structure. However, the architects note that: “The lesson we learnt – after the concrete had been completed across the basement and upper floor slabs (on temporary props) over 12 months – is that we could have used CLT instead and cut around 8 months from the programme. Lower CO2 and, of course, it would have been cheaper too.”

[9] Just one recent small-scale building that uses principles such as these in Sub-Saharan Africa is a “maternity waiting village” in Malawi.

[10] The CCFLA adds that there is presently (2023), “early-stage activity on energy efficiency and embodied carbon building codes through the BEEC [the 2017 National Building Energy Efficiency Code], but states and LGAs have limited related regulatory frameworks or policies in place.”

[11] For more on “sponge cities”, see here.

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Nigeria 🏠 Towards Sustainable Homes For All

People And Nature ☭ This is the first of three linked blog posts about housing in Nigeria by Tom Ackers. This post is based on chapters 3, 4 and 5 of Tom’s pamphlet, Making Homes and Energy Transition in Nigeria, published today as a free, downloadable PDF on People & Nature. The other posts are here and here.

3-October-2024

These posts provide an overview of the growing need for homes and the widespread slum dwelling forced on to Nigerians by gaping social inequalities. Tom also looks at the potential for housing needs to be met in sustainable ways that do not aggravate the climate crisis or other ruptures of society’s relationship with nature. He pays attention, as he did in his pamphlet on Decarbonising the Built Environment, published here last year, to the technologies that can allow us to live in harmony with our natural surroundings, and the obstacles put in front of those technologies by capital and the political structures that serve it.

Housing needs

One of the most basic human needs is the need for habitation. We need to think of decent housing as a universal human right.

Protest against forced evictions at Otodo Gbame, Lagos State, 2016.
Photo: Justice & Empowerment Initiatives

Homes the world over should effectively protect people from the elements outside: from the cold and the heat – and they should do so with a minimal outlay of supplemental energy. Homes also need to be adequately and safely serviced in terms of essential amenities – people need safe sources of heat for cooking, and they need clean electricity for appliances. People need spaces of privacy.

Moreover, the homes in which we live help us to establish meaning in the world. Part of that sense in which we experience inhabitation consists of our relationship to the materials used – be it stone, clay or wood; steel, glass or plastic.

The sheer variety of housing forms around the world and in history, writes Arjun Appadurai, “underscores the intimate connections between family life, design, cosmology and the social imagination”. What is more, “these connections do not require wealth, stability or security to achieve their force”.

However, poverty, political instability, and insecurity, can certainly undermine all of that. Housing, in many respects, has become a battlefront against the working class and peasant communities, globally. We see that in Nigeria.

Most of the crucial physical aspects of habitation are recognised in international law as essential human rights: part of a Right to Adequate Housing, codified in Article 25 of the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and Article 11.1 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966).

The associated guidance for those agreements also contains a provision on habitability, which includes that everyone have adequate living space, though how much that means is not specified.

How much space does someone need to live? How much space do Nigerians presently have? How many homes are there in Nigeria?

In my previous pamphlet, I looked at estimates of the present scale of building floor areas worldwide.[1]

From the available data, published by the International Energy Agency (IEA) and by the Building Energy Research Centre of Tsinghua University in China, I estimated that the average domestic floor area across Africa as a whole presently stands at about 17 square metres (m2) per person,[2] although it is unclear whether that figure would include slum housing. Although Africa as a whole is not the same as Nigeria, and although this tells us very little about the social distribution of floor space, that number may be borne in mind.

A study of scenarios for human consumption up to 2050, by a team of earth systems scientists, led by Arnulf Grubler, used an estimate for living space in 2020 of 22m2 per person (including children) across the global south, and 30m2 in the global north.

That study, published in 2018, modelled global consumption metrics for 2020-2050 that would accord with a low-energy, “contraction and convergence” scenario for the world economy, with global warming limited to 1.5°C. Notwithstanding the fact that, in 2024, constraining global warming to 1.5°C seems increasingly – disastrously – unlikely, the modelling, and the suggested pathways of material consumption, remain highly salient.[3]

How many homes are there in Nigeria? The previous government, in its Energy Transition Plan (ETP) indicated that there were a total of 42 million homes in Nigeria in 2020,[4] when the population was about 208 million.

If the 42 million homes includes those of about 60 million urban slum dwellers, then that suggests about 5 people per home – which corresponds to 2020 survey data reported by the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics (NBS).[5]

All people living in irregular housing – urban and rural – require new homes and related infrastructures.

Nigeria’s finance minister estimated, back in 2014, that slum occupancy and homelessness meant that about 17 million new housing units were needed. In 2023, the government estimated that the nationwide housing deficit had risen to 28 million units. Building those homes would require an estimated 21 trillion naira (₦21 trillion, equal last year to about US$ 27 billion). That amount is roughly 73% of the government’s approved budget for 2024.[6]

I can find no indication of what proportion of those 28 million homes would replace existing, inadequate homes, and what proportion would supplement existing homes to alleviate homelessness and over-occupancy.

The average urban household size in Nigeria is presently 4.5 people. Even if all of those 28 million new homes were to house only 3 people on average, then the implication is that 84 million people in Nigeria (37% of the population) presently lack adequate housing.

If the 28 million new homes were to house an average of 4 occupants, then that would represent 112 million people – roughly half the population.

Either way, a very large proportion of Nigeria’s population needs a new home at present.

In Lagos city, home to more than 7.25 million slum dwellers, according to the UN we can guess that something more than 1.6 million new homes are needed, to house those presently living in the city’s shanty towns. The state government says the housing deficit in Lagos State is about 3 million homes.[7]

So what of the future?

The “contraction and convergence” authors, Grubler et al, proposed 30m2 per person as a viable global average for 2050 – across the global north and south. That looks reasonable, for an equitable share in global floor areas.

The UN demographic forecast is for Nigeria’s population to hit about 380 million in 2050.

Let us assume that all future population growth is met with a sufficient number (and size) of homes to house urban and rural households at their current average sizes.

That would translate into around 38 million new homes across Nigeria by 2050, quite aside from the present housing deficit.[8]

Once you add in the present housing deficit, it suggests 66 million new homes constructed by 2050.

If we assume that each person in Nigeria (including children) needs 30m2 to live in, then the average floor area to house the average Nigerian household (5 people) would be 150m2.

If all newly constructed homes abided by this principle, then Nigeria’s growing population alone would require 4.5 billion m2 of additional residential floorspace. If the 28 million housing deficit were met, and housed people at a rate of 4 people per home, then that would require 3.4 billion m2 of floorspace.

The scale of the implied construction is enormous – but necessary.

Meanwhile, the forecast shift in urban/rural populations suggests that about 59 million homes need to be located in Nigeria’s urban areas alone in 2050 – two-and-a-half times the roughly 24 million urban homes in 2020.

Some proportion of urban “additions” will be homes that already exist in rural areas undergoing densification, and re-categorised from rural to urban. However, this also means that, while roughly 3 million additional homes will be needed in the countryside, many more than that will need to be built as the land considered to be “rural” shrinks in size.

All of these homes need to be climate resilient, and connected to essential amenities, including public transit.

When it comes to providing homes for those presently living in slums, informal settlements, or otherwise inadequate housing, one important thing to note is that slum clearance should be rejected.

The aim instead should be to maintain and support existing communities where they are – while bringing essential amenities and work into those communities. It is not the slums, but the slum-like conditions that need to be ameliorated, through what the UN-Habitat agency calls a “participatory slum upgrading approach”.

Urban restoration, of course, means much more than building homes. Homes require sanitation and other infrastructure.

Those living in the slums of Lagos that sit atop of water and across the city’s low-lying, flood-prone areas, are especially in need.

A total of 66 million new homes between 2025 and 2050 implies construction at a rate of 2.6 million new homes a year.[9]

How many homes are being built now?

Nationwide, housing production stood at only 100,000 new units per year in 2014, and has changed very little since.

Since 2016, Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Works and Housing (FMWH) has undertaken to deliver 200,000 new housing units annually, funded primarily via private mortgages with the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria through a Cooperative Housing Loan Scheme and National Affordable Workers’ Housing Programme.

But in 2017-2021, just 8871 housing units were delivered by the FMWH, with a further 4652 anticipated for 2022. As of 2021, less than 100,000 units per year were funded by government – less than 4% of what is needed.

Still fewer completions apparently came from private housebuilders, although the government had sought 800,000 units to be provided by the private sector.

According to the president of the Association of Housing Corporations of Nigeria (AHCN), most state governments have sat on their hands when it comes to providing social housing via already-existing state housing corporations. Instead they have favoured Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs), although those have produced few or no results.

A 2015 study already found that, just to bridge the existing housing gap, 1.5 million new homes would be required annually between 2012 and 2025. Plainly, those have utterly failed to materialise.

Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of new commercial homes are aimed at high-income households, instead of those most in need.

What of the quality of existing homes?

In Lagos, post-occupancy surveys have found that residents tend to be dissatisfied with the quality of mass public housing projects – and (no surprise) dissatisfaction is more pronounced among poorer residents (also see here).

According to evaluation undertaken in 2012, the physical conditions, design and build quality of housing, and of wider neighbourhood environments, were also found to be of a poor standard in 65% of assessed low-income housing, and in 35% of assessed middle-income housing.

All of those metrics need to be improved dramatically, if Nigerians are to enjoy a good quality of life.

The political economy of housebuilding

As mentioned above, the most recent estimate from the Nigerian government is that meeting the nationwide housing deficit will cost ₦21 trillion (2023 prices). That is about 73% the size of the approved federal budget for 2024.

Research on Nigeria by the IEA and Tsinghua University, that I mentioned above, gave estimates of floor area per person, in order to provide a baseline against which to measure projected future construction.

However, one argument often drawn from research of this sort is that enlarged populations are always and everywhere associated with enlarged economic demand, sufficient to pay for new homes to be built.[10]

Yet one can not simply assume that sufficient economic demand will materialise to provide for essential housing needs. “Urbanisation without growth” is commonplace: populations grow – inside and outside of cities – but real incomes are often in decline.[11]

The question in Nigeria, and in many other places, is instead whether sufficient economic activity, formal or informal, can be generated, to absorb a growing population that lacks any other non-market means of subsistence. More often than not, such populations totally lack the means to pay for new construction from out of their own pocket.

The influential architect Rem Koolhaas, in his writing on Lagos, notes that the city still retains – or at least it did twenty years ago:

huge housing projects and architectural complexes of a scale rarely seen in the resistant West. They are the historical city’s ‘gifts’ from other states – Israel, Czechoslovakia – that donated entire city sectors as aid or to stake some kind of now-defunct claim on Nigeria’s once fabled resources.

During the oil-rich 1970s, urban planning also turned towards fervent bouts of neighbourhood demolition, to carve highways over working class communities. Koolhaas explains that, in and around Lagos, this was led by a subsidiary of the German engineering firm Julius Berger.

Now, many of those structures are the physical infrastructure of some of Lagos’s greatest urban dysfunctionality – the basis of car dependence, and the habitual traffic “go-slows” that push the city’s productivity towards congestion and dissipation.

Nowadays, despite politicians’ sometimes fine words, no part of Nigerian government, at any level – whether national, state, or local – has taken effective action to meet the needs of the poor, who are in the majority. That is especially the case with regard to housing. Nigerian politicians care only about urban “development” insofar as it serves the elites.

The Nigerian writer AdĂ©wĂĄlĂ© MĂĄjĂ -Pearce charges the Federal Ministry of Works and Housing (FMWH) as, “a cash cow if ever there was one, by which I mean a cesspool of bribery and graft”.

Lagos State provides a particularly acute example. Despite all the evident pressures on land-use, and the difficulties imposed by the wetland environment, there remains sufficient buildable land to provide for the state’s housing needs. And yet, the government simply prioritises “urban development” for the 1%.[12]

Wherever existing slums are deemed to be situated on prime real estate, the neighbourhoods are demolished, their inhabitants threatened and moved on, and luxury developments built in their place.[13]

MĂĄjĂ -Pearce cites the “notorious” 1990 example of Maroko, a slum neighbourhood on Victoria Island. Evictions and demolitions were announced just a week in advance, over the radio.

“When the day arrived, women and girls were raped, property was looted, and an unknown number were killed in the ensuing mayhem.” Residents were told they would be rehoused in public housing, but nothing came of it.

Today, MakĂČko is called Victoria Island Extension, and the only poor to be seen are the servants employed in the mansions that have since sprung up.

Now, something similar seems to be brewing in MakĂČko, the “Venice of slums”, adjacent to downtown Lagos.

In 2020, residents were told, “there is going to be development and progress”. They “were given two options,” according to MĂĄjĂ -Pearce: “resettlement in another part of the city, or compensation for those with ‘valid documents to their property’.” This at a meeting closed to journalists, and in which community representatives were not even permitted to see the proposed plans.

Banana Island, an entire gated district of the city, and “the most expensive neighborhood in Nigeria”, is home to Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest man (and owner of Nigeria’s new Dangote oil refinery), and president TinĂșbĂș, along with numerous celebrities.

Eko-Atlantic, presently under construction, is another neighbourhood planned as a closed enclave. According to MĂĄjĂ -Pearce, it:

will have its own private security, running water, and electricity, in a country famous for failing on all those fronts . . . As the ruling class well knows, the energy of frustrated youth must go somewhere, hence the excessive violence and the ever more elaborate self-contained communities.

Yet, Eko-Atlantic promises to provide “environmentally friendly housing” – for 250,000 people, or rather, for the “250,000 people with upwards of US$500,000 to shell out for an apartment (five times that for a house)”.[14]

The developers of both communities, the Lebanese Chagoury brothers (Gilbert and Ronald), are friends of president TinĂșbĂș, and the three share longstanding business interests. TinĂșbĂș granted the brothers’ Chagoury Group title to the land for Eko-Atlantic when he was governor of Lagos State.[15]

The brothers in turn formerly worked for Nigeria’s military dictator, Sani Abacha – responsible for the executions of nine Ogoni environmental activists, including Ken Saro-Wiwa, in 1995. Abacha was hugely corrupt, and under his rule the brothers prospered.[16]

The brothers are also notoriously close to Bill and Hillary Clinton. Gilbert contributed to a voter registration committee for Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign in 1996, and as of 2008 was one of the largest donors to the Clinton Foundation.[17]

Bill Clinton thanked the brothers, “by gracing the opening ceremony for Eko-Atlantic,” writes MĂĄjĂ -Pearce.[18]

In this elite context, it is worth noting a conversation between Rem Koolhaas and KunlĂ© AdĂ©yáșčmĂ­, a Nigerian architect based in the Netherlands, acolyte of Koolhaas, and a former collaborator on the Lagos study in the late 1990s. When the two of them were interviewed by journalist Chris Michael for the Guardian in 2016, Michael asked them about Eko-Atlantic:

"To me,” mused AdĂ©yáșčmĂ­, “Eko-Atlantic is a project that tried to address the second challenge Lagos faces – one is urbanisation, and the other is climate change. […] The idea in itself is really great."

But isn’t Eko-Atlantic “a form of social or climate apartheid?"

Rem Koolhaas: “It’s typical of our contemporary kind of world. […] You need to look at inequality as a typical condition of modern society.”

KunlĂ© AdĂ©yáșčmĂ­: “The notion is to create a city to increase the economic opportunities, but I think that the real-estate values of a place like Eko-Atlantic is just really, really high. It’s a very ambitious project, and I think Lagos thinks to itself – or some of its leaders – oh, we deserve a place like Dubai.” [19]

Lagos as a whole has changed enormously since the 1990s, notes AdĂ©yáșčmĂ­. Yet there remains a “polarity” in the city: “you see your next-door neighbour doing a lot better”.

On the plus side, “that diversity creates a tension to survive. […] The middle class was almost non-existent a long time ago, but now you find a lot more people going to museums, watching movies, going to parks – it’s becoming a more liveable city. […] it’s a place of opportunity for both intellectuals and cowboys, and I think that’s such a great idea.”

Plainly, Lagos and Nigeria require urban designers and politicians that think differently to this.

Private capital has been unwilling or incapable of providing the scale of housing that is needed.

The Nigerian state, and its local affiliates, have been similarly disinclined to fund the construction of homes – instead of that, directly evicting households to make way for new rounds of speculative investment.

Nor has any substantial intervention or funding come from international agencies and other governments.

These are not things to be passively observed, valorised or celebrated.

However, the state certainly could fund housebuilding and public housing on a large scale – given the political pressure and the administrative will. Funding from the Nigerian government can always be economically sustainable, if it uses Nigeria’s own domestic currency as means of payment. The only real “fiscal constraint” on spending is the capacity of the Nigerian economy to absorb that expenditure, through expanded production and consumption – without pushing on general inflation. That, and the requirement to avoid those moneys being lost to corruption or to pad corporate balance sheets.

When it comes to housing, the country will always have sufficient real demand, until all housing needs are met. It can meet that demand through a sufficient application of skilled labour, with sufficient materials available for purchase in the domestic currency.

Housebuilding is a labour-intensive processes. The Nigerian government could, at least, aim to use its domestic currency to pay for the labour costs of a mass housebuilding programme.

On the other hand, wherever materials do need to be sourced from abroad, foreign governments and international agencies should be providing assistance.

Just like the Nigerian government, foreign governments should be using their monetary resources to spend directly into their own economies in order to push real resources to where they are needed in the world.

They should initially provide the required materials, or sufficient currency to procure them – grants, not loans. But they should also be providing sufficient materials, machinery, and finance, so that many such materials can be produced within Nigeria itself.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has recently noted that, “about half of the increase in urban population through 2050 is forecasted to concentrate in eight countries” – in ranking order: India, China, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Pakistan, Indonesia, USA, Bangladesh.

Of those eight, the IPCC says that all but the USA will need significant levels of external funding assistance to build adequate homes, roads, and other urban infrastructure to cope with expected levels of urbanisation.

The UN-Habitat agency states:

The rate at which adequate/affordable housing is supplied and provided on the global market is way lower than the rate of urban population growth.

The message is clear: capitalist development on its present basis cannot hope to address the real needs of people for decent homes – let alone their needs for public buildings, and infrastructure. Nigeria’s political elites evince no inclination to change the apartheid status quo.

Non-market strategies for provisioning decent homes need to be found instead. Essential needs can be met directly, wherever the market is not providing – and without boosterish fantasies that it somehow will provide.

The AHCN wants the Nigerian government to establish a special development fund to pay for rental and affordable mass housing provision. Such a fund needs to be huge, and the targets for provision need to be ambitious, in order to have any hope of meeting essential needs in the years ahead.

The environmental and climate impact of housing construction and maintenance

The greenhouse gas emissions from the built environment are usually categorised as either “embodied” or “operational”.

The “embodied emissions” are those produced by the construction, maintenance, and eventual demolition of a building or piece of infrastructure. “Operational emissions” come from the use of a building or piece of infrastructure – for example, from the use of electricity or hot water.

The terms “embodied carbon” and “operational carbon” are also used, since the vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions from the built environment are carbon dioxide (CO2).[20]

In this part, I focus on embodied emissions. Household energy use, that produces “operational” emissions, is covered in the linked post, Nigeria: bringing energy to homes.

Most embodied emissions come from the materials used for buildings. The emissions associated with the in-situ construction process tend to be tiny by comparison.

Steel and cement are two of the most emissions-intensive construction materials globally. They are the materials of choice for cheap, profitable construction.[21]

Steel manufacture is a highly globalised process, with steel shipped out around the world from capital-intensive production sites.

Cement can be made in different ways, but it is usually made using limestone and clay, that go into an intermediary product called clinker. Concrete is made by combining cement, plus water and various additives, to aggregates such as sand, gravel and crushed stone. (Cement comprises 10-15% of concrete by mass.)

Cement is usually manufactured by large companies, nearby to where it is consumed. However, Africa as a whole, and West Africa in particular, have few cement plants, and most of the cement used there comes from outside. Consequently, cement can be up to three times more expensive in Africa than it is in European and North American markets. The economic case for cement therefore is not as strong in Africa as it tends to be elsewhere – and this itself is a political opening.[22]

One important additional consequence of the widespread use of concrete is that the construction sector globally is precipitating a sand crisis, “driving erosion, flooding, the salination of aquifers and the collapse of coastal defences”, according to the UN.

You can see a ranking of different materials’ embodied emissions – per cubic metre, or per kilo of weight – in this useful “materials pyramid”, published by the Centre for Industrialised Architecture at The Royal Danish Academy.

Estimates of the embodied emissions of Nigeria’s housing stock were presented in a 2017 study by the researcher Isidore Ezema and his colleagues. They examined a public housing unit in Lagos, taken to be representative of those built by Lagos State Government between 1981 and 2005 for low- and medium- income households.

The aim was to measure the total CO2 emissions associated with construction, maintenance, and eventual demolition – the sample building’s so-called whole life “embodied carbon”.[23] The authors set aside the “operational emissions” that come from building use – emissions from cooking, electricity, etc.

The researchers’ sample building. Source: Isidore Ezema et al(2017)

This sample building comprised six apartments on three floors, with an overall floor area of 720m2. That’s 120m2 per 3-bedroom unit, inclusive of shared corridors and stairs.

The authors found that, assuming a life span of 50 years, the whole life embodied carbon of the building is approximately 589 kilogrammes of carbon dioxide per square metre (kgCO2/m2).

For comparison, in the UK, two leading benchmarks for embodied emissions in residential buildings specify that they should be less than 625 kilogrammes of carbon dioxide equivalent per square metre (kgCO2e/m2) (the Royal Institute of British Architects 2030 Climate Challenge), and less than 300 kgCO2e/m2 for domestic buildings over six storeys (the Low Energy Transformation Initiative (LETI)).

Current embodied emissions in the UK are typically around 1200 kgCO2e/m2.[24]

So, even in a society as fossil-dependent as Nigeria, the carbon intensity of housing construction is comparatively low, compared with Western norms.

The researchers in Lagos found that the energy used in construction-related transport and during construction itself were negligible, in line with global trends.

For the six-unit building, the total embodied emissions were 424 tonnes CO2e. Of that, 56% (about 239 tonnes CO2e) came from the construction materials, mostly cement, cement-based materials (such as concrete), and steel reinforcement.

A surprising 41% (about 175 tonnes CO2e) came from the lifetime maintenance of the building (“recurring” embodied carbon), around a third of which was due simply to a recurrent need for repainting.

What about the additional housing needed in Nigeria between now and 2050, as described in the previous section?

As mentioned, it is unclear what proportion of the present housing deficit (28 million homes) would replace existing homes, and what proportion would supplement existing homes to alleviate homelessness and over-occupancy.

If all of the new 28 million homes were to house only three people on average (compared to the average urban household size of 4.5 people), then they would provide housing for 84 million people (37% of the population). According to UN estimates, there will be 151 million additional residents of Nigeria by 2050.

If all necessary homes are provided, using similar construction techniques to those used in the sample building above, then the total embodied CO2 emissions would be at least 4 thousand million tonnes of CO2 (4Gt CO2).[25]

Putting that in context, the world’s total sociogenic greenhouse gas emissions in 2018 were 58 Gt CO2e. The world’s total “energy-related” buildings construction CO2 emissions for 2018 were 3.3 Gt CO2.

If construction were spread now over 25 years (2025-2050), then it would mean around 0.17 Gt CO2 per year of greenhouse gas emissions (170 Mt CO2).

That is more than half of Nigeria’s current annual territorial emissions, which were 376 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (Mt CO2e) in 2020, according to Climate Watch.

Clearly, less carbon-intensive buildings are needed. The possibilities are discussed in the linked post, Nigeria: towards sustainable homes for all.

In terms of wider environmental concerns, recall from part 1 how coastal flooding is becoming more severe in Nigeria due to climate change, while mangroves and other crucial wetland ecologies around Lagos are degraded.

The causes of those problems are man-made in more ways than one.

Adéwålé Måjà-Pearce writes about the terrible consequences of the construction of a breakwater near Lagos, built during the colonial period in order to protect the commercial harbour in Apapa:

The Apapa breakwater “interrupted the natural littoral drift that [had previously] deposited sand along the 100-mile Lagos coastline. The erosion [that followed construction] was rapid, despite the federal government’s efforts to turn back the tide, so to speak […] By the turn of the millennium, the ocean was spilling onto the highway that runs along the shoreline, threatening the offices and homes of the wealthy.”

Now, elite developments – Banana Island, Eko-Atlantic, and others – dredge from the seabed to reclaim land from the sea. In the case of Eko-Atlantic, its main stated aim, in engineering terms, is to provide a huge barrier against further erosion.

According to local fishing communities and activists, however, it has so far resulted in more severe (and deadly) tidal surges onto Lagos, along with permanent sea water inundations along the coast.

⏺ See also Making Homes and Energy Transition in Nigeria, by Tom Ackers (a free, downloadable PDF), and linked posts: Nigeria: towards sustainable homes for all and Nigeria: bringing energy to homes

References

[1] See section 6.3, and Appendix 4 of Decarbonising the Built Environment: a Global Overview.

[2] See footnote 3 in section 6.3, ibid.

[3] See Arnulf Grubler et al (2018), A low energy demand scenario for meeting the 1.5 °C target and sustainable development goals without negative emission technologies; see also the accompanying online database.

[4] Nigeria’s National Statistical Office put the number of households at 43.0 million in 2020, as reported here.

[5] According to the Nigeria Living Standards Survey 2020, “average household size in Nigeria is 5.06 persons per family: in rural areas the size is higher – 5.42 individuals versus 4.50 in urban areas.”

[6] The 28 million unit estimate and the ₦21 trillion estimate were stated by Vice President, Kashim Shettima, in September 2023. At that time, ₦21 trillion was equivalent to roughly US$ 27 billion. For more on the gap in housing provision, see here.

[7] If AdĂ©wĂĄlĂ© MĂĄjĂ -Pearce’s figure of more than 80% is correct, then that corresponds to 11.6 million people, which (at 4.50 people per home) implies around 2.6 million new homes.

[8] Author’s calculation, based on the UN’s projected scale of urban and rural populations, alongside present-day average urban and rural household sizes. The Buhari government’s ETP forecasts 70 million homes in 2050.

[9] According to analysis by the Nigerian Economic Summit Group, the government’s 2022 (revised) National Integrated Infrastructure Master Plan (NIMP) suggests that 1.22 million new homes be provided annually, through to 2043. The government expects just 20% of these to be funded by the public sector.

[10] The IEA/TU thinking and methodology about their floor area forecasts are outlined in a joint report from 2015 (and also here and here). For more on their estimates, see my Decarbonising the Built Environment: a Global Overview, section 6.3 footnote 3, and Appendix 4.

[11] The IEA/TU model appears to be vulnerable to the boosterish forecasting foibles of international agencies like the IMF, from which the IEA derives many of its economic forecasts. The “demographic dividend” forecast for Sub-Saharan Africa that I mentioned previously, is just one example.

[12] A picture paints a thousand words, in the case of the cover of Lagos State’s Climate Action Plan (no less!), which depicts a luxury marina.

[13] MĂĄjĂ -Pearce explains: “The amount of buildable land far outstrips the state’s housing needs, and [yet] the government itself seems invested only in the housing needs of the rich. The pattern, thus far, is to destroy existing housing to make way for more exclusive housing, which accommodates far fewer people at elitist prices.”.

[14] “Residents will even be able to avoid the city’s notoriously choked and potholed roads: private speedboats will be anchored along a six-mile-long promenade for quick getaways to the myriad beaches within easy distance – that is, before these beaches also succumb to the ocean.” See here.

[15] TinĂșbĂș’s national government is being legally challenged at the moment, over the award of a large highway construction project to a subsidiary of the Chagoury Group, without tender and in violation of procurement regulations. The highway is “the most expensive single project ever embarked upon by the Nigerian government”, and connects Eko-Atlantic to the oil-rich Niger Delta. Oluwaseyi TinĂșbĂș, son of president Bola TinĂșbĂș, and Ronald Chagoury Jr, son of Ronald Chagoury, co-owned an offshore company incorporated in the British Virgin Islands.

[16] Gilbert Chagoury, for example, received development deals and oil franchises, according to the Los Angeles Times. He was convicted in Switzerland in 2000 of having laundered money for Abacha.

[17] At which point, he had donated somewhere between $1 and $5 million, according to the Wall Street Journal.

[18] According to 2016 reporting by the Los Angeles Times, the Chagoury brothers are, moreover, “a prominent example of the nexus between Hillary Clinton’s State Department and the family’s Clinton Foundation”. The paper refers to potentially questionable lobbying of US State Department officials by an aide to Bill Clinton, concerning the location of a new US consulate on the Eko-Atlantic development. Construction of the new consulate broke ground in Eko-Atlantic in 2022.

[19] MĂĄjĂ -Pearce and others (including the Chagoury Group), call Eko-Atlantic the “Dubai of Africa” (see here, here). As noted before, Koolhaas compared Alaba International Electronics Market, in the late 1990s, to Dubai: “like Alaba, Dubai benefits from a branded, if unbridled, form of capitalism.”

[20] For more on embodied emissions, see Decarbonising the Built Environment: a Global Overview, part 2.3 and part 7. For more on operational emissions, see, part 2.3 and part 9.

[21] Cement is used almost entirely in construction – buildings and infrastructure – where it is a key ingredient of concrete, as well as of most construction mortars and tarmac. The production of cement is responsible for about 3 Gt CO2 emissions annually – about 5% of all sociogenic greenhouse gas emissions, and about 8% of all CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and industry. About 52% of the iron and steel used globally goes into construction. That is responsible for about 1.9 Gt of CO2 emissions annually – about 3.2% of all sociogenic emissions.

[22] Cement only became widely used across Africa in the middle of the 20th century, and construction in African countries tended to adopt often ill-fitting European standards for using cement and concrete in buildings and infrastructure. The enormous Dangote Group, owner of the new oil refinery near Lagos, owns Dangote Cement, which (notwithstanding the above) is the largest cement manufacturing company in Africa, with subsidiaries in ten countries across the continent. In 2022, revenues from Dangote Cement comprised 75% of the Dangote Group’s total revenue ($5.4 billion), according to the company.

[23] The “embodied emissions” also include other greenhouse gases other than CO2. The vast majority of embodied emissions are CO2 emissions. For more on embodied emissions, see Decarbonising the Built Environment: a Global Overview, part 2.3 and part 7

[24] CO2e stands for CO2-equivalent, so note that these benchmarks include other greenhouse gases besides CO2, though these tend to be very minor.

[25] That is, 589 kgCO2/m2 x 30m2 per person x 235 million people to be housed. The 235 million comprise at least 84 million people rehoused in meeting the 28 million unit housing deficit, plus 151 million additional residents of Nigeria in 2050. Ezema et al suggested that the Lagos building’s typology might be typical for what would be required to bridge the housing gap. At 120m2 for a 3-bedroom unit, it would correspond to 30m2 per person if four people lived there.

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Nigeria 🏠 Meeting The Need For Housing

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