As part of the Nigerian Alternative Heritages project, a French Embassy Fund programme, IFRA-Nigeria began a collaboration with the Centre for Contemporary Art Lagos (CCA) at the beginning of 2026. Its main goal was to digitize, make accessible and valorise the CCA archives.
On 1 June and 16 June, the Alliance Française of Port Harcourt and Lagos respectively, organised with IFRA-Nigeria and the support of the Institut Français the screening of "Speak up for Freedom". This documentary movie by Clément Sibony follows Nigerian women who survived sexual trafficking in Europe, as they put together a play retelling their experiences.
This play was organised by MIST (Mission of Intervention and Sensitisation against Sexual Trafficking), a survivor-led association operating in France. Both screenings were followed by a discussion with Flora Enifo, MIST's co-Founder and Project Manager, and Dr Elodie Apard, Researcher at IRD, board member of MIST and head of the Life After Trafficking research project.
This event is part of our 2026 "Debate of Ideas" programme on the theme "Listen to Sensitive and Alternative Voices to Pave the Way." The goal of this screening: to look past the stigma, give back their voices to the women first concerned by this issue, and encourage a dialogue on the topic between civil society, academics, artists and more.
Between 16 and 20 June 2026, the IFRA-Nigeria team was present at the Lagos Studies Association (LSA) Conference. This 2026 edition marked the tenth anniversary of the Conference and its theme was "The state of African Studies in the 21st century". Once again this year IFRA-Nigeria supported the organisation of the conference itself, and offered several grants for participants in our own panels.
This year, IFRA-Nigeria organised four panels:
IFRA-Nigeria members also participated in several panels:
On June 3, 2026, IFRA-Nigeria, with the National Museum of Unity, Ibadan, hosted a pop-up exhibition to close the two-year French Embassy-financed Nigerian Alternative Heritages project partnership between the two institutions. This project was made possible by the French Embassy Fund.
Conceived by Dr Delphine Manetta and Adéjọkẹ Rafiat Adétòrò, the programme was centred on the theme “Build Your Museum” and invited the public to reimagine heritage while challenging conventional norms that have long dictated our understanding of identity, culture, and belonging. The event was aimed at encouraging members of the public to actively participate in the narratives on heritage, as people were invited to contribute stories, objects, memories, and cultural experiences that shape their understanding of heritage and resonate with their own journey and community.
You can watch some highlights of the event on IFRA-Nigeria's YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/5ZnXzWa7MD8
On 20 May 2026, IFRA-Nigeria, in partnership with the National Museum of Unity in Ibadan, hosted the public presentation of projects conducted as part of the research and artistic creation initiative ‘(Re)imagining Heritage, (Re)using the Museum’. The initiative aimed to explore innovative ways of engaging with heritage, culture, and museum spaces through research and artistic creativity. This event took place under the Nigerian Alternative Heritages project, made possible by the French Embassy Fund.
You can watch a highlight of this event on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/de5PV_7WhKg.
On 11 June 2026, Professor Laurent Fourchard (Sciences Po) and Andrew Esiebo, professional photographer and visual artist, presented their collaborative research in our June methodological seminar. In their presentation, entitled “As we see am. A visual ethnography of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) in Lagos” they explored what it means to work with an artist as a researcher, including how to manage each different objectives and timelines.
On 4 June 2026, the Institute of African Studies (IAS) of the University of Ibadan (UI) and IFRA-Nigeria, held the latest conference in the “Imagine(d) Africa” series. Their guests were Dr Elodie Apard, researcher at the Institut de Recherche sur le Développement and Unité de Recherche Migrations et Société, and Flora Enifo, project manager and co-founder of the Mission d’Intervention et de Sensibilisation contre la Traite des êtres humains (MIST). Together, they introduced their collaborative work at the crossroads of scientific research and social engagement in a presentation titled “Studying sex trafficking: why and how? Perspectives from a collaborative research experience.”
On 2 July 2026, Adam Rodgers Johns, doctoral student in Anthropology at SOAS London, will present his work on the Yorùbá-led religious spaces in south-east London in our next methodological seminar. The borough of Southwark in south London reportedly contains the highest concentration of African Christians anywhere in the world outside of Africa. The Nigerian diaspora is the largest migrant diaspora in south-east London and the most common ethnicity of Nigerians in London is Yoruba. Areas of south-east London such as Peckham and Woolwich, which have large numbers of Yoruba-led religious spaces, have seen a rise in popularity leading to urban regeneration and gentrification. This project maps the impact of these changes on Yoruba-led religious spaces in south-east London, i.e., churches and mosques with a majority Yoruba-language speaking congregation. Religion is a suitable lens to explore Yoruba diasporic place-making as it plays a key role in people’s daily lives. Existing scholarship suggests that gentrification leads to ethnic displacement, as gentrifiers tend to be whiter than the communities that are being gentrified. Therefore, this research adopts an interdisciplinary approach, combining insights from anthropology, religious studies, migration studies, urban studies and African studies to better understand the impact of gentrification on the Yoruba-led religious spaces.
The seminar offers three case studies showing how specific Yoruba-led religious spaces negotiate urban change in relation to the local council, community activists and residents. In doing so, it sheds light on questions of the visibility/invisibility and the displacement/reterritorialisation of African religious spaces in the London diaspora. The focus will be on two regional headquarters of the Christ Apostolic Church (CAC) and one branch of the Cherubim and Seraphim (C&S) Church, and will be followed by a discussion of the ‘revival’ of these ‘Aladura’ churches in the south-east London Yoruba diaspora.
Practical information:
Date and time: 2 July 2026, 10am to 12pm
Location: IFRA-Nigeria Resource Centre, Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan*
Application link (deadline 26 June 2026): https://forms.gle/WnxacZzNsop8CFkX7
IFRA-Nigeria, MIST, the French Institute in Nigeria and the Alliance Française de Lagos invite you to an engaging evening of film and discussion on the critical issue of human trafficking.
The event will feature the screening of Speak Up for Freedom, a powerful documentary by Clément Sibony, followed by a discussion with:
This event offers an opportunity to reflect on the realities of human trafficking, hear expert perspectives and engage in meaningful dialogue on this pressing issue.
On 23 July 2026, Géo-Cités (CRIA), IFRA-Nigeria and the University of Ibadan will organise a workshop on "Sensitive and minority archives: select, digitize and archiving." The workshop is part of the ongoing research project (in consolidation phase) “Archiving and Digitizing African Futures: Minority Memories and Heritage,” which uses archival materials to study the memory and heritage of groups in Africa that are marginalized, stigmatized, dissident, or underrepresented, as well as their visions of the future. The “archival turn,” which originated in the English-speaking world, questions the notion of archives produced in colonial contexts. African researchers have reinterpreted colonial archives from an Afrocentric perspective, considering, for example, oral traditions, performance, and gestural expression as “archives” within the framework of a living, fluid, and relational archival approach (Adeduntan A., Omitola O., 2023). Some co-produced projects aim to return these archives to marginalized groups: examples include digital archive projects highlighting forms of emancipation such as the “Archives of Nigerian Left” in Nigeria or, in South Africa, the “GALA Queer Archives,” as well as the digital community archive project “A People’s Guide to Archives and Democracy.”
On 21 May 2026, Dr Stefan Le Courant (IFRA-Nigeria and CNRS) held a methodological seminar on the topic “Mysterious absences: initial reflections from an ongoing study in Ivory Coast”, where he went over his current fieldwork. Though his work touches on migration, he takes an original approach by not focusing on the movement of population aspect. For example, previously in France, he studied migrants forced to hide from authorities because they are illegally present in the country. What interested him was the question of building identity when you have to hide who you are.
His new project, which takes place in Côte d’Ivoire and Nigeria, focuses on the people who disappeared, usually while attempting to migrate to North Africa or Europe. Specifically, he interrogates what is the impact of their absence, how the people left behind manage this in their daily life.
On Wednesday, 6 May 2026, IFRA-Nigeria, in collaboration with the National Museum of Unity in Ibadan, hosted a guest lecture and practical workshop under the theme “Make Your Medicine: Heritage, Culture, and Health.” The event sought to foster public engagement with traditional medical knowledge, healing practices, and the interplay between culture, heritage, and health. The programme was part of the Nigerian Alternative Heritages Project, supported by the French Embassy Fund.
On Thursday 14 May 2026, the participants of the February workshop on "Sensitive ways of doing, writing and sharing research" presented their work in an exhibition at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan, with the collaboration of the Cornelius Adepegba Museum of African Art (CAMAA). The four groups each carried out a fieldwork in the Ibadan central bus station, from which they extracted a scientific analysis in an original form: a creative writing piece, photographs and an audio montage. From the same location and with the same instruction, each revealed different insights on health, gender, the market and infrastructure in the station. This event is part of our 2026 "Debate of Ideas" programme on the theme "Listen to Sensitive and Alternative Voices to Pave the Way."
The opening of the exhibition was attended by the participants, students, staff of the Institute of African Studies and representatives of workers at the bus station. After introductory remarks by Dr Pauline Guinard, IFRA-Nigeria Director, Dr Delphine Manetta, IFRA-Nigeria Deputy-Director and Professor Molatokunbo Seunfunmi Olutayo, the attendants were able to look through the students' creations and interact with them regarding their work.
On 11 June, Andrew Esiebo and Dr Laurent Fourchard will present a visual ethnography work they have been carrying out together since 2024 on the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) in Lagos as part of our methodological seminar series. Through a mixed methodology of photography and ethnography, they explore the visible hand of an organization whose main functions are unseen, hidden, difficult to grasp or stigmatized. They aim to shed light on the front stage of the union and to expose the nature of public authority in spaces abandoned by the state. The seminar will explore at what conditions do collaborative work make it possible to overcome the clichés and stereotypical stories about this union and how, the practices of one modify the practices of the other.
Practical information:
Date & Time: 11 June, 2-4pm
Location: IFRA-Nigeria Resource Centre, Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan
Sign-up here (deadline 5 June): https://forms.gle/CNvna2ZsnRqFtP2c8
Abstract
This article by Youssef Bouri examines the contestation that emerged in late 2023 against an urban renewal project in Ibadan titled “Baywood Estate: a luxury gated community” built in lieu of the Ogunpa Forest Reserve, one of the last remaining urban forests of Ibadan, and affecting the adjoining Agodi Gardens. It draws, inter alia, on the analysis of narrative interviews, online tribunes, open letters, legal proceedings, news articles, and policy documents. The article situates the Baywood Estate project within a historical and contemporary continuum of urban renewal in Ibadan marked by the socially exclusionary appropriation of formerly public land. Interviewees argue that this real-estate project limits access to environmental resources and degrades a social space for the broader population while privileging economically privileged groups. They situate the project within Ibadan’s ecological history of recurrent forest clearing and resulting environmental damage. The analysis highlights a six-decade-long record in which successive Oyo State governments, regardless of political party or regime type, have converted public environmental commons, often into elite-oriented consumption spaces, with environmental costs borne by the broader urban population in the form of flooding, erosion, and the loss of social and biodiversity hotspots.
Participants in the mobilization were highly educated and exhibited substantial social capital. They initially preferred non-confrontational, dialogue-based approaches to engage the government but were met, according to accounts, by State-sponsored violence. In response, they attempted to sue the project promoter, the Oyo State government, and other actors. The article also finds generational differences within the movement, particularly in how opponents politicized both the mobilization and the Baywood Estate project itself. It proposes an explanation for these differing politicizations and regarding what the mobilization suggests about changes in the resources that enable political access in Ibadan.