Study tour to France on urban transports to the benefit of Lagos State, Nigeria

In Africa's largest city with an estimated population of 25 million, transport is a priority for the Lagos State government. The traffic that mobilizes Lagosians for up to several hours a day, and the asset offered by the lagoon which represents 22% of the total surface of the State, are two invitations to the development of mass public transport by road and river.

The study tour will take place in Paris and Nantes cities to tackle intermodality challenges between road-based and water-based transportations. Executives from the Lagos Metropolitan Area Transport Authority (LAMATA) and the Lagos State Waterways Authority (LASWA) will attend. 

The program will encompass technical meetings with French Transport Regulatory authorities to tackle mobility governance and planning, business meetings with highly specialized firms in the field of digitalization, electro-mobility and maintenance, and some site-visits including BRT, bus depot, interchanges, ferry terminals and shipyard.

As France’s bilateral development policy donor in charge of implementing the French Official Development Assistance (ODA) worldwide, AFD has developed an international background in sustainable mobility bringing technical assistance and funding in the form of grant and subsidized loans to countries of the Global South. In Nigeria, AFD has financed for around 700 million euros of rural and urban transports projects since 2008 including 250 million euros for the development of the BRT system, the expansion and modernization of the Lagos State bus network.

This study tour will contribute to strengthen the capacities of regulatory authorities, enhance the development of intermodality, support Lagos State in its effort to develop clean-powered bus fleet and vessels on the transport network, and bring some innovative practices into LAMATA and LASWA for the implementation of two AFD-assisted projects.

The on-going “Lagos State Strategic Transport Master Plan project phase 1” (LSTMP-phase 1) implemented by LAMATA is funded by a 178 M EUR AFD credit facility and aims at enhancing access to the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system in Lagos through the construction of 8 quality bus corridors for a total length of 43km, and two Interchanges in Marina and Mile 2 that will connect the bus and the ferry to the Blue Line of the light rail mass transit system. All the infrastructures shall be delivered by 2024.

The “Waterways Investment for the Development of the Environment in Lagos State” project (WIDE-LAG) to be managed by LASWA aims to support Lagos in the development of mass waterways transport to shift road traffic to the waterways network.

While 22% of the State’s surface is made of water, 60% of its land surface is less than a meter above sea level, the combination of erosion and land subsidence linked to global warming and anthropogenic pressures should increase the potential of the lagoon as a transport vector. At the request of Lagos State, AFD has mobilized a grant of 1.2 million euros in 2022 to finance the preparatory studies for the WIDE-LAG project, which will help support Lagos in adapting and mitigating the impacts of climate change, in particular by using less emissive vessel technologies.

Contact presse :

Antoine LE BIHAN : AFD Representative in Lagos.

Nwala ULOMA : Executive Assistant, Agence française de développement, Abuja.