Blue Economy
Lagos Rides the Wave of Nigeria’s Blue Economy Boom
Lagos Rides the Wave of Nigeria’s Blue Economy Boom
How Lagos Is Riding the Wave of Water Transportation, Electric Racing, and Africa’s $400 Billion Blue Economy
Special Report by: Okeoghene Onoriobe | Marine and Blue Economy Correspondent | Lagos-Nigeria
Lagos — Africa’s largest megacity — sits on a paradox. Despite having one of the most expansive waterway networks on the continent, less than 1% of its daily transportation uses water. But a major shift is underway. From passenger ferries multiplying five-fold at Ikorodu terminal, to Lagos hosting E1’s first-ever electric boat race in Africa, Nigeria is finally tapping into a resource that could help solve one of its most chronic urban problems: gridlock. And with the UNDP projecting Africa’s blue economy to hit $400 billion by 2030, the stakes — and the opportunities — have never been bigger.
1. The Problem: A City Drowning in Traffic — But Ignoring Its Waterways
Lagos is home to over 20 million people. On any given weekday, its road network — groaning under the weight of overcrowded buses, danfo minivans, and an ever-growing fleet of private cars — grinds to a near standstill. Commuters routinely spend four to six hours in traffic for journeys that should take under an hour. Yet few look out of their car window and consider the broader solution that flows quietly alongside them: the Lagos Lagoon and its vast network of creeks, rivers, and coastal waterways.
According to Professor Charles Asenime, an expert in Transport and Mobility at Lagos State University, this underutilisation is both staggering and entirely reversible:
“If you look at the structure of Lagos State, about 16% of the land mass is made up of water. And then we have the water network that is capable of taking you almost anywhere in Lagos. Despite this, the usage was very, very low — less than 1%.” — Prof. Charles Asenime, Lagos State University
Think about what that means: 16% of Lagos is water — a network of natural highways that could carry tens of thousands of commuters daily. For decades, this resource sat largely idle, not because it lacked potential, but because it lacked investment, political will, and public awareness.
Figure 1 — Lagos State Land vs Water Composition. Source: Lagos State University Research
2. The Turning Tide: Government Steps In
The shift began when the Lagos State Government formally committed to developing its waterways as a strategic transport corridor. The Lagos State Waterways Authority (LASWA) was tasked with creating an enabling environment — improving terminal infrastructure, licensing operators, and setting safety standards. The effects have been tangible and swift.
At the Ikorodu terminal, one of the busiest hubs in the state, the transformation is most visible. Private operators like GT Waterline Ferry Services have dramatically scaled their operations, attributing much of their growth directly to increased government engagement.
“In 2018, when this particular terminal where we are was still under construction, we were moving about 10, 15 boats per day. Now as of today we move nothing less than 50 boats in a day. On an average of 1,000 passengers daily, around about 7 destinations from our major hub.” — Atinuke Oyenuga, CEO — GT Waterline Ferry Services
The numbers tell a compelling story of growth — a 4x increase in vessel movements and a burgeoning daily ridership that rivals many land-based transit systems in the country.
Figure 2 — Ikorodu Terminal: Boats per Day (2018 vs. Today). Source: GT Waterline Ferry Services
Figure 3 — GT Waterline Ferry Services: Key Performance Metrics Today
- Enter E1: When Electric Racing Meets Blue Economy Ambition
Water transportation in Lagos got a glamorous — and globally connected — boost when the E1 electric boat racing series chose Lagos as the site of its first-ever African race. E1, which describes itself as the “Formula E of the seas,” features sleek, fully electric race boats called RaceBirds that foil above the water at speeds of up to 50 knots. The spectacle of these futuristic vessels skimming across Lagos Harbour sent a powerful message: the waterways of Lagos are not just functional — they are world-class.
For Rodi Basso, CEO and co-founder of E1, the choice of Lagos was deliberate and deeply symbolic:
“E1 goes beyond the sport. The sport needs to play this kind of role which is inspirational. This comes with thought leadership, some concrete action on the coastal area.” — Rodi Basso, CEO & Co-Founder — E1 Racing
Basso envisions a legacy that goes well beyond the race itself — one where Lagos becomes a global reference point for sustainable water mobility, attracting investment, innovation, and talent to the city’s waterfront.
“We want to show that a different water mobility is possible for the future. This will bring developments, this will bring jobs, innovation, and will put Lagos potentially on the map as the place to go if you want to learn about the water mobility of the future.” — Rodi Basso, CEO & Co-Founder — E1 Racing
For local operators and regulators, the E1 race was more than a spectacle — it was a masterclass in possibility. Damilola Emmanuel, General Manager of LASWA, described the impact:
“It was where sustainability met innovation because what we saw happening with that boat race was a dynamic way of looking at water transport. A lot of the local operators could see the future — saying this is where we want to eventually be.” — Damilola Emmanuel, General Manager — LASWA
4. The $400 Billion Prize: Africa’s Blue Economy Opportunity
The excitement in Lagos is not occurring in isolation. Across Africa, governments, investors, and international bodies are waking up to the enormous untapped potential of the continent’s oceans, rivers, and lakes — what economists collectively call the “Blue Economy.” The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has estimated that Africa’s blue economy could generate over $400 billion annually by 2030, through sectors including fisheries, aquaculture, maritime trade, coastal tourism, offshore energy, and water transport.
Nigeria, with its extensive coastline along the Gulf of Guinea, the Niger Delta’s labyrinthine waterways, and the vast lagoon system of Lagos, is uniquely positioned to claim a significant share of this wealth. But experts are quick to note that seizing this opportunity requires more than infrastructure investment — it demands a commitment to sustainability.
Figure 4 — Africa’s Blue Economy: Projected Revenue Growth to $400 Billion by 2030. Source: UNDP
- Sustainability: The Non-Negotiable Condition
Perhaps the most important voice in this story belongs not to a boat operator or a racing executive, but to an academic who has spent years studying how cities interact with water. Professor Asenime’s call for sustainability is both a warning and a roadmap:
“We must have waterways that are clean and clear. Then it will help the economy to come up. The bottom line is that it must be sustainable — so we don’t want to use it now and cause problems in the future. We want it to grow to the extent that those in the future will partake, they will benefit from what we are doing now.” — Prof. Charles Asenime, Lagos State University
This is a crucial insight. Lagos’s waterways currently face significant environmental pressures — plastic waste, oil spills, industrial runoff, and informal settlement encroachment. Without aggressive clean-up and protection measures, the same waterways being celebrated today could become degraded to the point of unusability within a generation.
The integration of electric vessels — as demonstrated by E1 — offers a glimpse of what zero-emission water transport can look like. If Lagos and Nigeria can align their blue economy ambitions with strong environmental governance, the model they build could become a template for cities across the Global South.
Key Takeaways at a Glance
Metric / Insight | Data / Finding |
| Lagos water as % of total land mass | 16% |
| Water transport share of Lagos commuters | Less than 1% (pre-initiative) |
| Ikorodu ferry boats per day (2018) | ~10–15 |
| Ikorodu ferry boats per day (today) | 50+ |
| Daily passengers at Ikorodu hub | ~1,000 |
| Destinations served from Ikorodu | 7 |
| E1 Africa — first race location | Lagos, Nigeria |
| Africa Blue Economy (UNDP 2030 projection) | $400 Billion+ |
Additional reports by: Emetena Ikuku, Waterways News Reporter Researcher; Warri
For a follow up on this news report, always log on to Waterways News: www.waterwaysnews.ng
Blue Economy
Water Transport Operators Push For Recognition At The Table As FTAN Demands Tourism Policy Reforms
Water Transport Operators Push For Recognition At The Table As FTAN Demands Tourism Policy Reforms
By Okeoghene Onoriobe | Waterways News
Nigeria’s tourism sector needs urgent policy reform, stronger collaboration and fresh investment to compete globally and water transport operators who are members of the Federation of Tourism Associations of Nigeria (FTAN) want that conversation to include the boats, ferries and waterway routes that move millions of Nigerians and could move even more tourists.
That was the underlying idea raised by Comrade Babatope Fajemirokun National President of Waterfront Boat Owners and Transporters Association of Nigeria (WABOTAN) represented by Chief Raymond Gold, National PRO of WABOTAN, at the ninth Nigeria Tourism Investors Forum and Exhibition (NTIFE), held over two days in Abuja under the theme “Tourism Transformation Through Collaboration, Policy Alignment and Investment.” The events took place between Thursday 30 to Friday 31 of July 2026. Waterfront Boat Owners and Transporters Association of Nigeria (WABOTAN), is a corporate member of FTAN
The forum drew policymakers, investors, tourism operators and development partners.
FTAN President Dr Aliyu Badaki used his welcome remarks to press the Federal Government to overhaul tourism-related laws and regulatory frameworks that he said breed duplication, institutional conflict and legal uncertainty for operators. He said the federation’s newly developed Tourism Transformation Mandate (TTM) is meant to unify every segment of the tourism value chain.
Babatope Fajemirokun, through Chief Gold emphasizes the fact that this value chain for Nigeria’s coastal cities, riverine communities and inland waterway corridors, runs directly through water transport.
Badaki argued that fragmented efforts and weak coordination have held back the sector for years, and called for regulation that enables rather than inhibits growth.
Minister of Art, Culture, Tourism and Creative Economy, Hannatu Musawa, who declared the forum open, described tourism as a strategic pillar for economic diversification. She said government cannot finance tourism transformation alone and that private capital must lead, with government’s role limited to creating an enabling environment for investors.
In his keynote address, Sen. Ibrahim Ida called for stronger collaboration among government, the private sector and host communities, saying tourism can generate jobs, foreign exchange and diversification if properly harnessed.
Panel sessions, moderated by Justina Ovat of Calabar Hospitality House Limited, featured Nigeria Tourism Development Authority (NTDA) Director-General Dr Ola Awakan, who called for policy consistency and investor-friendly incentives, and Dr Philip Maga of the National Institute for Hospitality and Tourism (NIHOTOUR), who flagged the need for stronger workforce training to close skills gaps across the hospitality industry.
Hospitality entrepreneur Lanre Balogun urged investors to prioritise disciplined, long-term planning.
Nigeria Watch
For Nigeria’s water transport sector, NTIFE’s reform push is not a side conversation. Rather, it is a direct stakeholder issue. FTAN’s corporate membership includes Waterfront Boat Owners and Transporters Association of Nigeria (WABOTAN) and the Association of Tourist Boat Operators and Water Transporters of Nigeria (ATBOWATON), both drawn from the ranks of operators who run the boats, ferries and water taxis that already serve Lagos’s creeks, the Niger Delta’s riverine towns and coastal leisure routes. Their presence inside FTAN means the federation’s demand for regulatory clarity and coordinated policy carries an inland-waterways and blue-economy dimension that goes beyond hotels and heritage sites.
That matters because water tourism sits at an awkward regulatory junction in Nigeria. A tourist boat operator answers not only to tourism authorities but potentially to NIWA, LASWA (in Lagos) and NIMASA on safety standards, and state government tourism boards, precisely the kind of overlapping jurisdiction Badaki described as breeding “duplication, institutional conflicts… and operational uncertainty.”
The 2026 Supreme Court ruling affirming NIWA’s regulatory authority over inland waterways nationwide, following the NIWA-LASWA jurisdictional dispute, is a live example of the kind of institutional friction FTAN’s Tourism Transformation Mandate is meant to resolve, at least on the tourism side.
Musawa’s call for private capital to lead tourism investment also lands squarely on water transport operators’ desks. Vessel acquisition, safety retrofitting, jetty infrastructure and life-jacket compliance all require capital that small-scale operators, including WABOTAN’s member-cooperative structure, have struggled to access, a gap that echoes the long-running CVFF disbursement failure in the cabotage shipping sector and underscores why financing bottlenecks are not unique to cargo and passenger shipping alone.
If FTAN’s push for policy alignment succeeds in drawing water transport formally into Nigeria’s tourism investment architecture, operators like WABOTAN and ATBOWATON could gain a stronger claim to inclusion in infrastructure programmes such as the Omi-Eko electric ferry project and LASWA’s ferry safety development initiatives, turning routine commuter water transport into a recognised leisure and tourism asset, not just a transportation afterthought.
For a sector accustomed to being regulated but rarely consulted, this call by Babatope Fajemirokun is a modest but meaningful call.
Blue Economy
NIMASA Deepens Seafarer Welfare Push, Signs Off Renewed Mission to Seafarers Collaboration
NIMASA Deepens Seafarer Welfare Push, Signs Off Renewed Mission to Seafarers Collaboration
By Ighoyota Onaibre | Waterways News
The Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) has restated its commitment to improving the welfare of Nigerian seafarers, pledging deeper collaboration with the Mission to Seafarers (MtS) as part of ongoing reforms in the sector.
The commitment came as the Director-General, Dr Dayo Mobereola, received a delegation from the Mission to Seafarers at the agency’s Lagos headquarters, led by the Chairman of MtS Lagos, Chief Adebayo Sarumi, alongside the Regional Director for Africa, Reverend Cedric Rautenbach.
Speaking on behalf of the DG, NIMASA’s Executive Director for Operations, Engr. Fatai Taiye Adeyemi, said the agency would continue tightening certification processes, expanding capacity development programmes, and strengthening welfare policies for seafarers both at sea and in port, in partnership with stakeholders such as the Mission to Seafarers.
Chief Sarumi commended NIMASA’s ongoing reforms and expressed confidence that closer collaboration would translate into tangible welfare gains for Nigerian maritime professionals. Reverend Rautenbach, for his part, clarified that while the Mission to Seafarers and Nigeria’s Port Welfare Committees pursue a shared objective which is the the wellbeing of seafarers. The two bodies operate on distinct, complementary mandates, making coordination between them essential to strengthening on-ground support at Nigerian ports.
The meeting covered decent working conditions, welfare service gaps, and areas of mutual collaboration. NIMASA said the engagement aligns with its obligations under the Maritime Labour Convention (MLC) 2006, and forms part of a broader push toward stronger regulatory oversight and stakeholder engagement on seafarer rights.
Nigeria Watch
Beyond the courtesy-visit optics, this meeting lands on a fault line that has dogged Nigerian seafarer welfare for years: fragmented institutional responsibility. NIMASA regulates and certifies; Port Welfare Committees are meant to deliver frontline services at berths; the Mission to Seafarers, a faith-based international NGO, fills gaps neither statutory body always reaches. These gaps are chaplaincy, shore leave support, emergency assistance, and advocacy for stranded or abandoned crew.
Rautenbach’s point about “distinct but complementary mandates” is worth pressing on, because in practice that distinction has often meant duplication in some areas and total absence in others.
Nigerian seafarers have long reported patchy access to welfare facilities at ports like Apapa, Tin Can Island, and Onne. Such reports include inconsistent internet access, poor rest facilities, and slow response to cases of wage default or abandonment by errant shipowners, issues MWUN has repeatedly raised in past CBA compliance disputes.
NIMASA’s MLC 2006 framing is the right one, but enforcement, not policy language, remains the industry’s persistent complaint. If this renewed MtS partnership is to mean more than another photo-op at headquarters, it should translate into a documented, port-by-port welfare service map: which ports have functioning seafarer centres, which Port Welfare Committees are actually active, and where the Mission to Seafarers’ Flying Angel network is present versus where seafarers are effectively on their own.
Nigerian crews calling at their own national ports deserve better than welfare support that depends on which NGO happens to be in town.
NIMASA Bets on Youths to Power Nigeria’s Blue Giant Ambitions
By Okeoghene Onoriobe | Waterways News
The Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) has restated that the country’s push to become Africa’s “Blue Giant” will rise or fall on how well it equips young Nigerians for the blue economy, with the agency’s Director-General, Dr Dayo Mobereola, describing youth capacity-building as the engine room of the National Marine and Blue Economy Policy.
Mobereola made the point at the 10th Taiwo Afolabi Annual Maritime (TAAM) Lecture at the University of Lagos, where he was represented by NIMASA’s Director of Reforms Coordination and Blue Economy, Mrs Nneka Obianyor. He linked the agency’s youth agenda directly to President Bola Tinubu’s economic diversification drive, noting that the Minister of Marine and Blue Economy, Adegboyega Oyetola, has directed NIMASA to prioritise skills development and job creation for young Nigerians in the sector.
Director-General of NIMASA, Dr. Dayo Mobereola
To back that up, Mobereola pointed to a cluster of NIMASA programmes already running: the long-standing Nigerian Seafarers Development Programme (NSDP), a newly launched Blue Economy Accelerator Initiative, skills acquisition centres spread across the six geopolitical zones, and the rollout of Institutes of Maritime Studies in select Nigerian universities. He framed these as deliberate interventions meant to build capacity, generate employment, and spur innovation among the country’s youth population.
Separately, NIMASA used the UNILAG engagement to go beyond ceremony, running an interactive session with doctoral and master’s students on shipping development, maritime logistics, cabotage implementation, and maritime labour regulation. The session was led by the agency’s Director of Cabotage Services, Ms Gloria Anyasodo, and was pitched as part of a broader effort to strengthen ties between academia and industry in tackling the maritime sector’s practical challenges.
Nigeria Watch
The optics are good; the test, as always, will be delivery. NIMASA has no shortage of youth-facing initiatives on paper. The NSDP has existed for years, skills centres have been announced before, and Institutes of Maritime Studies have been floated in past budget cycles. What’s new here is the Blue Economy Accelerator Initiative, and it arrives with the same vagueness that has dogged similar rollouts: no disclosed funding envelope, no timeline for the six geopolitical zone centres to be fully operational, and no public framework for how graduates of these programmes are absorbed into shipping, logistics, or cabotage jobs afterward.
That absorption question matters more than any lecture-hall soundbite. Nigeria’s maritime training pipeline, from MAN Oron to the seafarer certification backlog that this publication has tracked, already produces more qualified hands than the domestic fleet and port ecosystem can currently employ. This is a mismatch tied directly to the Cabotage Vessel Financing Fund’s decades-long disbursement failure and the slow pace of indigenous vessel acquisition. Training more youths without fixing that bottleneck simply shifts the frustration downstream, from unemployment to underemployment.
There’s also an accountability gap in how these announcements are made. They are usually made through a lecture delegation rather than a costed policy document. If NIMASA and the Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy are serious about youths driving the Blue Giant ambition, the next disclosure should include enrolment numbers, the accelerator’s funding source, and most critically, the placement data showing how many NSDP and skills-centre graduates have actually found sea-time or shore-based maritime employment. Until then, this remains a well-intentioned promise stacked on top of several older, still-unfulfilled promises.
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