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Nigeria has Africa’s largest economy and, driven by its natural resources and growing population, it’s continuing to expand at an impressive rate. That has made the country one of the continent’s busiest markets for construction and there are some ambitions projects under way – but none of them rival the vision and scope of Eko Atlantic.
The capital of Nigeria is Abuja, but the country’s undisputed first city is Lagos. It’s both the largest and the richest, and plays a vital role in economic growth. For that reason it’s home to many of Nigeria’s grandest projects. Eko Atlantic will be a new satellite city of Lagos, hosting residential, business and tourist districts, and it’s all being built on an artificial peninsula at the end of one of the city’s most popular beaches.
The first stage of the project was to bring in around 35,000 tons of rock to form a stable perimeter enclosing four square miles. Next, millions of cubic metres of sand were dredged from the sea approaches to Lagos and dumped inside the perimeter. Over a six-year period the sea bed, lying at a depth of 12 to 15 metres, was raised to become new land protected by state of the art breakwaters and storm surge defences. The reclaimed area was complete by February 2013, and after allowing it time to stabilise construction was begun. Currently the first residential tower is scheduled to open in 2016.
Video Source: http://www.ekoatlantic.com/
Eko Atlantic has two functions, and creating a new city is only one of them; the other is to stop the Atlantic’s waves from gradually eroding the coastline Lagos stands on. Instead of simply extending the existing breakwaters the Lagos State government decided to do something more ambitious, and the result was Eko Atlantic. There are larger projects built on reclaimed land, including some of the developments in San Francisco Bay – and of course the area that used to be Holland’s Zuiderzee – but this is the most extensive ever undertaken in West Africa.
The first stage of the project was to bring in around 35,000 tons of rock to form a stable perimeter enclosing four square miles. Next, millions of cubic metres of sand were dredged from the sea approaches to Lagos and dumped inside the perimeter. Over a six-year period the sea bed, lying at a depth of 12 to 15 metres, was raised to become new land protected by state of the art breakwaters and storm surge defences. The reclaimed area was complete by February 2013, and after allowing it time to stabilise construction was begun. Currently the first residential tower is scheduled to open in 2016.
It’s hard to overstate how far-sighted a project Eko Atlantic is. Lagos has taken a bold decision to jump several generations of urban technology and aims to create a highly modern city built to the latest standards in every respect, with a particular emphasis on sustainability and efficiency. Eko Atlantic will have its own utilities, independent of Lagos, including power and water supplies. While expansion and development of many major African cities is handicapped by limited or obsolete infrastructure Eko Atlantic aims to avoid this by building the ideal system from scratch.
If Eko Atlantic is a success – and it certainly should be – it will do a lot to boost Lagos’s status as a business centre. It’s also likely to spur new developments on neighbouring Victoria Island, which is already benefiting from Eko Atlantic’s sea defences, and in the districts between the original coastline and central Lagos. As well as the ongoing construction of the project itself the impetus it gives the local economy should be the catalyst for further building over the coming decades.
Eko Atlantic Facts and Figures
- 35,000 tons of rock breakwater
- 140 million tons of sand fill
- 4 square miles (10.4 square km) of new land area
- Planned residences for 250,000 people
- 150,000 predicted commuters per day