Recent reports indicating that large portions of land (estimated 50-80m hectares) have been bought by international investors in middle- and low-income countries, with roughly two-thirds of those purchases occurring in sub-Saharan Africa, calls for a cursory appraisal of the implications of the trend of land grabbing for West African food security.

Quality of life (QoL) studies have become acceptable globally as indicators of how well a people are living. They are increasingly being used to identify and design areas of intervention to raise the wellbeing of a population. While studies on livelihoods in the informal waste recycling system of developing country cities have also been on the increase in recent years, assessments of the QoL expectations within the livelihoods framework in the informal waste recycling sector seem surprisingly few.

The informal sector in cities of the developing world is often analyzed from the prism of urban poverty, social exclusion and limited social integration, and lack of power. While such issues have commanded considerable attention in development literature, contribution of the sector to urban governance and barriers to its social participation in the urban governance process appears to have received relatively little epistemological treatment.

Informal waste management (IWM) has over the years been a contentious issue in urban development policy in Africa. Surprisingly, knowledge contributions on the subject have remained somewhat poorly assessed by urban development researchers throughout the continent. This paper reviews developments in IWM in Africa, drawing from lessons learned over a decade of research and activism in Nigerian cities. The aim is to evaluate the scholarship impact of Nigerian informal garbage geographies and to accentuate emerging innovations in IWM research and activism in the country.

Aba is a politically volatile, economically vibrant but environmentally poor city that is a microcosm of social conditions in the Nigerian urban informal economy. Hence, this study interrogates the social sustainability of waste picking in the city, using a hybrid of political economy and sustainable livelihoods frameworks to explicate social conditions of labour in the waste economy in relation to state/institutional policies. A mixed-methods approach was utilised, and findings indicate that a cocktail of conditions affect waste picking.

The Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Act of 1992 aimed to make the environment a central theme in development in Nigeria. Nevertheless, the extent of engagement with local cultures in the Nigerian EIA process is not statutorily guaranteed. While most EIAs in Nigeria have been for oil and gas projects in the Niger Delta, and have focused strongly on the biophysical environment, socio-economic and cultural aspects have remained marginal.

This study applies the political ecology perspective in reframing corporate‐community engagement and adapts the community‐directed intervention (CDI) strategy using Global Memorandum of Understanding (GMoU) framework in relation to 30 rural communities that are likely to be affected by gas exploration and production activities in the Niger Delta region. The study draws attention to the indigenous structures and capacities of communities to implement CDI initiatives for possible replication in areas facing similar development challenges.

This article examines the political economy of collective organising in the motorcycle taxi economy of Nigerian cities. Using the mixed-methods approach, this study demonstrates the nature and problems of collective organising in the motorcycle taxi economy. It notes that implementation of a neo-liberal development policy in Nigeria in the 1980s gave rise to job losses and catalysed the creation of a motorcycle taxi sub-system as a livelihood.