Lagos will soon reach 46°C. Can a city built on concrete cool itself down?

In Lagos, Nigeria escaping the heat is not always as simple as stepping indoors.

Open-air markets and bus parks bake under the sun, while most residents work outdoors surrounded by heat-radiating concrete. The city’s own climate projections point to temperatures reaching 44°C by 2050, and 46°C by 2070.

“We are already feeling the impact,” said Lasisi Adedoyin K. S., director of environmental and social safeguards in Lagos State’s Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources.

Lagos officials are confronting dire statistics. A recent University of Oxford study ranked Lagos as the ninth most heat-risked city in the world and the most exposed in Africa. Satellite records show the city has warmed by up to 2.4°C above pre-1990 levels, and the dense urban core now runs 8.3°C hotter than the city's greener edges.

Climate change and phenomena such as El Niño are pushing temperatures higher across the region, but not all of the heat enveloping Lagos is inevitable. Much of the urban heat island is manmade – created as buildings, roads and other artificial surfaces replaced cool vegetation.

“The dense buildings, the asphalt, the concrete, the heavy traffic, all these things are contributing to extreme heat,” Adedoyin said.

That means the temperature rise can be partially reduced through changes to the way the city is designed. For Lagos, which is home to more than 21 million people, the challenge is no longer simply preparing for hotter weather. It is adapting the entire urban core.

The solution, Adedoyin argues, cannot simply be more air conditioners.

Cooling solutions for a sizzling city

Population growth and strained power grids have made reliable cooling difficult in Lagos.

“When you don't have constant electricity, there is no way you can have air conditioning working,” Adedoyin said.

Even when air conditioners work, they cycle heat back into sizzling city streets, adding to the heat island effect. They also do little to help the millions of residents who work outdoors.

That has pushed Lagos toward a broader idea of cooling which includes the design of buildings and streets, trees and parks, and public transportation. More than seven million trees have been planted across the state since 2009 through government agencies, schools, communities, businesses and civil society groups.

The state has adopted the International Finance Corporation's EDGE green-building system which certifies buildings that cut energy and water use and carbon in materials by at least a fifth against conventional design. Adedoyin said Lagos wants buildings above ten floors to carry green certification, with cooling systems designed to suit their environment. Cool roofs, which absorb heat rather than radiate it indoors, are being installed in public buildings.

“Urban greening is not only about parks and trees, but also making sure that our infrastructure is green infrastructure,” he said.

The same thinking shapes bus stops and transport hubs, where shade, ventilation and passive cooling cut the time commuters spend in the sun. Lagos has invested in bus rapid transit and electric rail lines. It is also launching 78 high-capacity electric ferries, powered by solar, which will cover 140 km of waterways.

"Mobility and cooling were never separate in our strategy," Adedoyin said. Fewer private vehicles, he continued, mean less emissions and heat from traffic. The transportation sector is Nigeria’s third largest source of greenhouse gas emissions.

Warning people before extreme heat hits

Lagos is part of the United Nations Environment Programme’s plan for Greening Cities to Beat the Heat – launched at COP30 under the Global Climate Action Agenda – which brings over 100 cities together to develop practical responses to extreme heat.

Through Beat the Heat’s 50@50 campaign, Lagos is looking to cities including Paris and Barcelona for examples of heat-alert systems which it hopes to launch soon. The system would link alert levels to specific actions like adjusting work and school schedules or outdoor market hours, Adedoyin said.

Also, with a grant from C40 cities, Lagos officials plan to map heat across neighborhoods and identify where cooling infrastructure is most needed.

“If we are going to have several days of severe heat, how are we going to plan? Which tools are we going to use?” he said. “That is what we really want to do in Lagos.”

The high cost of climate inaction

Lagos is taking climate change seriously, Adedoyin said, because the economics leave little choice: the state faces up to $33 billion in losses from sea-level rise, extreme heat and rainfall if it doesn’t take action.

To meet that threat, the state has worked with the World Bank on an investment framework and is seeking to mobilize between $700 million and $1.3 billion a year for adaptation. They are also trying to make climate resilience a condition of private development.

“Honestly, Lagos cannot do this alone,” Adedoyin said. “It's about scale. It's about speed. It's about credibility.”

Adedoyin argues it is critical to sell the wider benefits of green infrastructure – better health, fewer disruptions to work and school, and safer streets. Before starting a project, Adedoyin said Lagos officials set a baseline and weigh the consequences of doing nothing.

"What I look out for is the cost of inaction," he said.

The payoff, he added, is not always about temperature. In some areas where Lagos has created green spaces, security has improved after neglected land was transformed into parks with lighting and maintenance.

"You take a wasteland and you turn it into a park with street lights and other features," he said. "It brings security to the community. It brings jobs to the agriculturist."

That broader return, he said, helps make the case for climate adaptation spending.

Five years to prove the cooling strategy worked

Five years from now, Adedoyin wants Lagos to have a heat-emergency preparedness plan and an alert system capable of reaching even its smallest communities. Above all, he wants proof of implementation.

“How many trees survived? Did temperatures fall in the neighborhoods where they were planted? Did heat-related morbidity decline? Those are the things we really want to look out for,” he said.

It is a more demanding standard than announcing a new climate initiative or counting the number of trees planted. It requires long-term change.

“For us in Lagos, a climate project is not just a one-off thing,” he said. “It's dedication from the state government that shows that yes, we see the challenges we are facing, and yes, we are already taking action.”