Dr Eghosa Igudia has been awarded £50,000 grant under the British Academy’s Humanities and Social Sciences Tackling Global Challenges Programme. The two year project, that began on the 1st March 2021, will study inclusive poverty reduction. The project team includes Prof Rob Ackrill (NTU), Dr Olasumbo Olusanya and Dr Basirat Oyaolowo (UNILAG, Nigeria).
The project seeks to answer the following questions: What perspectives exist amongst stakeholders in Lagos’s informal economy on the criminalisation of visible economic activities and the control of urban spaces? And how can these perspectives be incorporated into a framework promoting dialogue on policies targeting poverty reduction and economic and social inclusion? Lagos’s urban space has become highly contested, between policymakers as they criminalise visible informal activities in pursuit of modernisation, and citizens seeking survival and day-to-day opportunities to buy and sell.
To address these challenges, the project will combine institutional and modernisation theories, unifying interdisciplinary qualitative and quantitative methods to analyse interview and questionnaire data. Findings will be disseminated to academic and stakeholder audiences. Crucial will be stakeholder workshops, designed not just for dissemination but to facilitate dialogue on substantive pro-poor policy change. These findings will have relevance for urban areas across the Global South.