Collection
Nigerian Market Days
Grain in Kano, camels in Maiduguri, yam on the Benue and the largest market in West Africa at Onitsha.
A market is the most legible thing in a Nigerian town: it will tell you what the land grows, what the road costs, who has money this month and which way the trade is flowing. Four markets, read as documents.
- DispatchOnitsha6.14°N 6.80°E
Everything crosses at Onitsha
A river port with what is often called the largest market in West Africa, and one bridge holding it all together.
- DispatchMaiduguri11.83°N 13.15°E
The camels still come to Maiduguri
A trade route older than the border it crosses, and a market that has quietly kept working.
What a market day actually costs
Ugu, tomatoes, peppers and stockfish: the arithmetic behind a stall, and why the price is never only the price.
- DispatchMakurdi7.73°N 8.54°E
A city that is entirely about crossing a river
Makurdi exists because of a bridge, grows the country's yam, and floods on a schedule everybody knows.
