Attending the Invest in Lagos conference last week was a real eye-opener. Hosted by the visionary Governor of Lagos, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, and featuring Commissioner for Commerce, Cooperatives, Trade and Investment Folashade K. Ambrose-Medebem among its leading voices, the conference brought together international delegates to shine a light on the extraordinary economic opportunity presented by Lagos, Nigeria and the wider African continent. I left energised, informed and convinced that the way many in the West still think about Africa is badly in need of an update.
The statistics alone are remarkable. Lagos is a metropolis of 25 million people, Africa's largest city, and its economy accounts for approximately one third of Nigeria's entire GDP. Lagos State has been ranked the best state in Nigeria for ease of doing business, and has also been named the world's top emerging tech hub by Dealroom. With over 2,500 startups and five of Africa's nine unicorn companies, those valued at over a billion dollars, calling Lagos home, the city is not merely keeping pace with global innovation; in many respects it is leading it.
Nigeria's economy is itself growing at 4% per year, but Lagos punches well above its weight even within that context. Were Lagos a standalone economy, it would rank as the fifth largest on the African continent, ahead of Kenya. These are not the numbers of a city to be overlooked.
Time and time again at the conference, speakers returned to a theme that resonated deeply: the need to reframe how the world thinks about Africa. There was, for many years, a dismissive and patronising lens through which the continent was viewed. In a notorious 1994 article, the writer Robert Kaplan described Lagos as the "cliché par excellence of Third World urban dysfunction." That characterisation feels not just outdated, but jarring, when set against today's reality.
Originally published by African Business.