Travel Guide Lagos

Formerly made up of swamps, Lagos - the lake in Portuguese - is a string of islands intertwined between ocean, river arms and inland sea, connected to the Mainland - to the mainland, by four main bridges including the emblematic 3rd Mainland Bridge, the longest bridge in Africa. Lagos is the beating heart of Nigeria, the continent's largest economy and largest population. The city is thus competing with Cairo as the first African megalopolis, and if the figures cannot be accurate as the censuses are so difficult, it is estimated that there will be around 23 million Lagossians in 2019. But even more than the number, it is the speed of population growth that impresses: the city would gain nearly 250,000 inhabitants each year!But what are they all coming for? Fortune and prosperity: the "Most optimistic people in the world" being driven by the incantation engraved on many Danfo - these minibuses out of age and overflowing with commuting workers - "No food for lazy men". Because yes, no success for the sleepy in a city where the daily life of the overwhelming majority of an insomniac population is a struggle. A productive monster that claims nearly 70% of the country's economy: Lagos' GDP exceeds that of Côte d'Ivoire, Senegal and Cameroon combined! The city thus collects excesses, iconic both for the hectares of slums on stilts in the Makoko district - and to accommodate the largest concentration of millionaires and billionaires on the continent!Lagos will make you protest against the absurdity of its traffic and amaze you with its creative power, which floods the continent with its films and songs, it will make you cry on a pepe-soup with steaming spices and laugh out loud in front of the theatre of daily life, in the heart of the Nigerians whose humour is fierce. But it will not leave you indifferent! Whether you have come to follow in the footsteps of the author Chimamanda Adichie or the singer Fela Kuti, to discover Yabacon - the Nigerian Silicon Valley that seduced Mark Zuckerberg and all the GAFAs who have taken up residence there - or simply to try your luck by giving alms to God Business, Lagos will change your convictions and make you guess that part of the future is well located here, on this side of the world in a country that will very soon become the 3rd largest population power on the planet.