“Nigeria is the world’s 8th largest producer of crude oil, yet remains one of its poorest nations — an estimated 70 percent of its 150 million residents live below the poverty line. The environment is paying a steep price as well. An estimated 500 million gallons of oil have spilled into the delta — the equivalent of roughly one Exxon Valdez disaster per year,” according to The Atlantic. The American magazine has printed 31 images (from various sources) that illustrate the negative effects of oil production, both “legal” and illegal, on the environment and the people of Nigeria’s Niger Delta. So bad is the practice of gas flaring that the flares are so prevalent, the Niger Delta appears brightly lit (the lower left) in a detail from a NASA image of the Earth taken at night. Below is that image and a few others from the set.





Further Reading

From Cape To Cairo

When two Africans—one from the south, the other from the north—set out to cross the continent, they raised the question: how easy is it for an African to move in their own land?

The road to Rafah

The ‘Sumud’ convoy from Tunis to Gaza is reviving the radical promise of pan-African solidarity and reclaiming an anticolonial tactic lost to history.

Sinners and ancestors

Ryan Coogler’s latest film is more than a vampire fable—it’s a bridge between Black American history and African audiences hungry for connection, investment, and storytelling rooted in shared struggle.