West Africa's most electric city, home to Afrobeats, Nollywood, and suya at midnight
Lagos is the largest city in Africa (22–25 million, depending on where you draw the boundary) and one of the fastest-growing megacities in the world — a city of extraordinary creative energy in music (Afrobeats originated here with Fela Kuti; Burna Boy, Wizkid, and Davido made it global), fashion, and film (Nollywood is the world's second-largest film industry by volume, after Bollywood). The food culture is Yoruba at its core — jollof rice, egusi soup, suya (spice-rubbed skewered beef from northern Nigeria, grilled over charcoal and eaten with raw onions and tomatoes), and puff-puff (fried d…
Lagos was originally a Yoruba settlement on a lagoon island, became a major transatlantic slave-trade port under the Kingdom of Benin, and was annexed by Britain as a Crown Colony in 1861 specifically to suppress the slave trade. It served as Nigeria's capital from independence in 1960 until 1991, when the capital was moved to Abuja. Despite losing official capital status, Lagos remained and accelerated as Nigeria's economic and cultural hub — it generates roughly 25% of the country's GDP and has one of the youngest median populations of any megacity on Earth.