Construction

The developer initiated marine works to reclaim nine square kilometres of land for Eko Atlantic in 2008. An earlier round in the battle to protect the Lagos coastline was won two years previously with the construction of a sea wall along Bar Beach, to prevent a potential flooding disaster that threatened Victoria Island. Key elements of the management structure that successfully completed the challenging shoreline protection along Bar Beach are now leading the development of Eko Atlantic which, by extension, will both strengthen coastal defence and create land for the new Nigerian city. Marine works to reclaim the land will take six years spread over three two-year phases. Extensive tests of the Eko Atlantic sea defence system were conducted in Denmark at one of the world’s leading engineering and environmental research centres. Scale models of a section of the seven kilometres sea wall to protect the city withstood the worst storm Lagos could expect to face in 100 years under simulated conditions. In the Netherlands, world-renowned consultants, architects and engineers have worked tirelessly on Eko Atlantic. The Financial Centre has its own specialized team of architects working to perfect their design. The development area is vast, equivalent in size to the skyscraper district of Manhattan Island in New York City. Chinese vessels are pumping up to eighty thousand tons of sand a day into the reclamation area. Work on the first section of Eko Atlantic’s own sea wall, made out of rock, has also begun. Eko Atlantic is turning a liability of coastal erosion into a national asset.