An Inexorable Force : Population Growth in Lagos

A long, but rewarding read here for the Upper Sixth, who have just been studying the extent to which population growth hinders economics development.

James Meek, from The Guardian, details the lives of Lagosians.  The population of Lagos is somewhere between 9 and 18 million, they produce 9,000 tonnes of trash every day, but unlike London, there is no sewage system.  The city has sprawled outwards like tendrils along the main roads out of Lagos and it is not uncommon for people to commute for five hours to get into the city.

The city's middle classes have given up on the government providing decent services: they generate their own electricity, dig their own wells, send their kids to private schools and communicate with mobile phones.  They just have to work harder and pray harder to provide for their families.  No money, no friends.

An extract: "What doesn't change is the overwhelming, inexorable force each has to grapple with, the force that smashes buildings and builds new ones, squeezes people into ever smaller spaces or makes them move miles from where they grew up, jams the roads, smogs the air, fouls the water, magnifies fortunes, atomises individuals - the force of the city's swelling population."