Video: Location and importance of Lagos

﻿Good day geographers and welcome to this lesson today about Lagos, in Nigeria. Nigeria is a newly emerging economy and Lagos is an important city, regionally, nationally and internationally. Some people refer to it as a city that never sleeps. I find investigating countries fascinating and I've loved all the countries in Africa I've been to, but I haven't been to Nigeria yet and I would love to. I'm adding it to my wishlist. For today's lesson, all you're going to need is a pen and paper, in a second, I'm going to ask you to pause, take a moment to get those and clear away all those distractions around you. Alternatively, you might choose to move somewhere quieter, so you won't be disturbed today. Pause now and I'll see you back in a second. Excellent. So now you've got a piece of paper, can you write the title for me at the top of your page? Location and importance of Lagos. Lagos is a place name, so it needs a capital L and please make sure you've underlined it, nice and beautifully. Well let's get stuck straight in. We're going to have a look at where Lagos is and we're going to do this looking at Google Earth flights from London, all the way over to Nigeria. It's going to be a little bit quicker than a plane journey. How's spectacular is that? It makes me want to get on a plane right now. So we know that Lagos is located pretty much directly South from United Kingdom, On this globe, it's located here in Africa where that red dot is, but when we discuss any location we want to think about scale. We want to start zoomed out and we want to zoom slowly in. So, Lagos is located in the Northern hemisphere, on this map, I've put the equator on in green and you can see Lagos sitting just north of the equator. Lagos is a mega city in this country of Nigeria. A mega city means that it has over 10 million people living in it. We've zoomed in now to have a look at Nigeria on this map and we can see Lagos along the coast of the Gulf of Guinea. It's about 75 kilometres away from the border with Benin. Zooming in even further to look at Lagos, Lagos formed originally on Lagos Island and grew out from there. It's around the outlet of the Lagos lagoon, where Lagos is, but let's have a brief look at what it looks like. This shows you the extent of the city. You can see an area on Lagos Island where it's very built up with lots and lots of skyscrapers. This is the view from the lagoon. So it's situated around Lagos Lagoon, so there's lots of water access to the area. Here in the background, you can see the ports, Lagos developed originally from being a fishing village, but has developed into a major port for the country. It's not all so well built up however, this photo shows your Mushin Market, it's very, very busy and you can see the building quality is much lower. Lagos is full of inequalities, we've seen really develop built up areas, but also there are areas of squatter settlements. and this area limit shows you the squatter settlement of Makoko, which is actually built on water. These houses have been built on stilts and occupy the areas around the edge of the city. So let's test, Lagos is in which continent, it's a quick one, five seconds. Tell me now. Yes, you've got it, so it's in the continent of Africa. Which country is it in? Another five seconds. It is Nigeria. I hope you didn't get confused with it's continent, which is Africa. Right, we've looked at the location, it's your turn. I would like you to copy and correct these statements about Lagos' location. There are six mistakes and one of them is a dodgy capital letter. So can you pause the video now for me, rewrite them and correct those six errors. Good luck. Right, did you get all six? We started with Lagos is located in the Northern. You should have had Northern rather than Southern, tick it for me, hemisphere on the continent of Africa, it is a mega city had over 10 million people, that categorises a mega city. In Nigeria capital N for place names, close to the border with Benin. It is located on the south coast, where Nigeria lies on the Gulf of Guinea not the Guinea Sea. So six areas there, but I want you just to take an extra five seconds to go back and check all those capital letters for the place names like mine. Lagos is located in Nigeria and Nigeria is an example of a newly emerging economy. Newly emerging economies are countries that have begun to experience high rates of economic development, usually along with rapid industrialization and that means lots of factories being set up. Nigeria then is a country where things are improving, quality of life is improving, but how do we prove that? This data table shows data for Nigeria in 2015 in the first row and 1990 in the second row. Take 10 seconds now, how would you say that this evidence supports the fact that Nigeria is a newly emerging economy, the fact that the country is improving? The first thing you would have hopefully picked up, was that the GNI per capita is increasing. This is how much money people would have on average. So that has increased from $475 U.S dollars per capita, per person, up to 2,730. More people are living in urban areas, this is increased at 48% now, and that's a sign of the country developing, because people are leaving their farming jobs and moving to the cities. Less people are dying because of better health care. More people are going to secondary school and we have more people employed in secondary jobs. And that would be a result of the primary jobs going into decline, it's much better to have secondary jobs because they're higher paid, so that's a sign of a country developing. The reason why we've broken this down, is Lagos is our example of a city in a newly emerging economy. Let's start to think about why Lagos is so important. When we talk about importance, it could be regional importance and this means why is it important to the surrounding area or region? We talk about it's national importance, so why is Lagos important to the country? Why is it important to Nigeria? And finally, why is it internationally important? So why is it important to other countries in the world? Time for you to think about that on your own. I would like you to categorise how Lagos is important regionally. There are two statements for each category. So pause the video now, make sure you resume when you're done. Good luck. Let's check those answers. So the first category we were looking for was regional importance. Lagos has a large migrant population and this increases cultural diversity. That's really important to the region, because it means there are lots of cultural opportunities for people at the weekend or people in their spare time. An example of this is that there's an Indian Cultural Association, or you could go to festivals such as the Lagos Black Heritage Festival or the India Festival., so lots of lovely social opportunities. It also has good roads, which keep it well connected to other towns. This is going to help the region with the trade, if they can get goods to other cities on these main roads, nice and quickly, they're going to earn more profit. For national importance, we've got that Lagos is home to 80% of Nigeria's industry. This is really important for jobs and you'll find that lots of people migrate to Lagos to get a job. Because of all these jobs, because of all this industry, Lagos contribute 30% of Nigeria's GDP. That large contribution to GDP means that the government has money to invest in developing those poorer regions with things like better access to education, or healthcare, or improving infrastructure like roads to get there. Finally, these last two show how important Lagos is internationally. Lagos is the main financial centre for the whole of West Africa. This means that there are lots of TNCs and global banking firms attracted to Lagos. This is going to boost Africa's economy as more and more people start to trade with places in Africa. Finally, Lagos has a large port and an international airport. This means that there are strong trade links between other countries. So countries like China and USA get many goods exported from Nigeria, for example, oil. We know why Lagos is important, but we have to be able to explain those reasons. So on the screen I've got the two ways Lagos is internationally important. Can you take five seconds now for me? See if you can match up the knowledge, so the reason why it's important with the explanation on the right-hand side. So the large port and international airport means that we're developing strong trade links with countries like China and USA who import goods like oil from Nigeria. Being a main financial centre means that we're attracting TNCs and global banking firms to the area, boosting Africa's economy. So it's all about connectives when we're explaining things. This means therefore, consequently. Right, let's test you, which percentage of Nigeria's industry is located in Lagos? Five seconds, get the right one, tell me out loud. It is 80%. Be careful you didn't get 30. 30 was the contribution to Nigeria's GDP. Which one of these is international important? Make sure you categorise all of them. Right, did you get a large port airport? So it's got international importance because it's opening up trade with other countries. The other two are national importance. Why is Lagos important to Nigeria? We've had lots of reasons why Lagos is such an important city, but we need to put this into practise. Explain the national and regional importance of a city in a newly emerging economy you have studied. It's a four mark question. So I'm going to be looking for success criteria such as, you naming the NEE and the city. Don't forget those capital letters. I want you to try and make your facts specific to Lagos. You've got to develop your explanations, this means that consequently and make sure because it's four marks, you've got two ideas, one of them national and one of the regional. Let's have a look at an example. Lagos in Nigeria is internationally important. So I've done one that's not in your exam questions and no copying. Is internationally important, as it has a large port and international airport. This means that strong tradings have been developed with other countries like USA and China, who import goods like oil from Nigeria. Your turn to tackle it, best of luck. Pause the video and I'll see you in a second. Let's see how you've got on. We're going to start with a regionally important one. Lagos in Nigeria, mention both places, make sure you've got capital letters, is regionally important as it has a large migrant population which increases the cultural diversity. This means that people living in the region around Lagos, will have many cultural opportunities. You might have been super amazing and added in an example such as, the Lagos Black Heritage Festival. Alternatively you may have done this one, Lagos in Nigeria is regionally important as it has good roads keeping it connected to other towns nearby, this is important as it means they can trade more easily. You then needed to tackle the national importance. Lagos is nationally important as it is home to 80% of Nigeria's industry. This means that there are lots of jobs available and people often migrate there looking for work. An alternative might be, Lagos is nationally important as it contributes 30% of Nigeria's GDP. This is important as it means the government has additional income it can invest in improving things like infrastructure, in poorer areas of the country. So count up your ticks. You only needed one regional importance and one national importance. Hope you got four marks. Remember if you need to pause the video and have a look or redo any of your answers do so. Well, that brings us to the end of today's lesson. We've learned about where Lagos is located and we do that in order of scale. So Northern hemisphere, continent of Africa. It used to be Nigeria's capital city, and it's located down on the Gulf of Guinea, near to the border of Benin. It's a really important city, as it has over 80% of Nigeria's industry, so that contributes to 30% of that GNI. It sounds like it's a great place to live, if you live in Nigeria. Nigeria is developing rapidly and so is our learning today. Develop your understanding further by completing the quiz on the next page. I can't wait to see how you've gone, it will only take you a couple of minutes. Thanks so much for your time today. Take care and I look forward to you joining me soon, where we're going to have a look at how Lagos has grown and why, have a great day.

Exit Quiz: Location and importance of Lagos

Lesson summary: Location and importance of Lagos

In this lesson, we look at the location of Lagos which is a city in the NEE of Nigeria. We then move on to consider why it has regional, national and international importance.

Geography

Y10 Geography

Key Stage 4

Year 10

Today we looked at the location of Lagos and how it is important regionally, nationally and internationally. Let's see how you got on.

Geography

Location and importance of Lagos

Video

Location and importance of Lagos.

Question 1

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Question 5

Q1.Lagos is located in the continent of...

Q2.Lagos is in...

Q3.Lagos has what percentage of Nigeria's industry?

Q4.Which is a reason why Lagos is important nationally?

Q5.Lagos is in which hemisphere?