Enemy Capital in Colonial Lagos
In the First World War, the British seized German and Austro-Hungarian trading houses in Lagos. The seizures reshaped the city's commercial economy for decades.
Economic Historian
Monetary systems, colonial financial infrastructure and British West African economic history.
I study the economic history of West Africa. My focus is on three things: how money worked, what colonial banks built, and how people and capital moved between Africa and Europe.
Current Research
Three connected research projects.
Central Banking in British West Africa
How institutional architecture, monetary policy and political economy took shape across the British West African territories.
The Nigerian Diaspora in Europe
How Nigerian communities formed in European cities, the economic networks they built, and where those networks led.
Published Work
Selected publications and work in preparation.
Emergency Money and Counter-Money: The Bank of Biafra and the Central Bank of Nigeria (1967-1970)
In preparation. Read the project page
Monetary Sovereignty, Sovereign Identities, Monetary Identities in Ghana and Nigeria in the Late 1950s to Early 1960s
Published in Identity Transformation and Politicization in Africa: Shifting Mobilization, edited by Toyin Falola and Céline A. Jacquemin. Rowman & Littlefield, 15 July 2022.
The Status of the West African Sterling in Southern Nigeria in 1916
Published in There Came a Time: Essays on the Great War in Africa, edited by Anne Samson, Ana Paula Pires and Dan Gilfoyle. TSL Books, 5 November 2018.
The chapter traces how the West African Currency Board and the colonial authorities introduced banknotes in Southern Nigeria during the First World War.
TSL Books · Great War in Africa Association · Amazon listing
"Top Up, Pay as You Go!" Mobile Telephony and the Internet Revolutions in Sub-Saharan Africa
Published in Urban Challenges and Survival Strategies in Africa by Adeshina Afolayan and Toyin Falola. Carolina Academic Press, 17 October 2017.
How mobile phones and the internet reshaped finance, farming, e-commerce and schools across several African countries.
Education & Recognition
Academic foundation.
Postgraduate Diploma in Geographic Data Science, Birkbeck (London). MPhil Economic History, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne. Master's in African History, also Paris I. Licence in Yoruba, INALCO. Masters of European Business, ESCP.
Awarded the Allocation de recherche de la Mission historique de la Banque de France. The French Central Bank funded the MPhil work in economic history.
Papers are out at journals in economic history, African studies and business history.