GreenRoof Lagos began in 2018 with seventeen rooftops and a borrowed irrigation kit. By 2024, it operates on more than 2,400 rooftops across 11 local government areas, supplying fresh vegetables to 340 schools, 80 hospitals, and hundreds of market traders who previously couldn't afford imported produce.
The programme trains urban youth — many of them previously unemployed — as certified rooftop farmers. Each trained farmer goes on to train two more. The network has grown entirely through peer learning, without advertising and without corporate sponsorship.
It will not solve Lagos's food insecurity alone. But it demonstrates, at scale, what a city can become when it decides to treat every unused surface as potential abundance.