The Lagos Market Women’s Association, International Activism, and the Struggle for Decolonization

Halimat Somotan is a social historian who studies the overlooked contributions of everyday urban dwellers in making cities more livable. Her current book manuscript, The Decolonizing City: Popular Politics and the Making of Postcolonial Lagos, 1941-76, explores how tenants, women traders, and homeowners struggled against colonial planning laws like urban renewal from the end of colonial rule to the rise of military rule in Lagos, Nigeria.