Lagos And California Have Signed A Sister-State Agreement

Geo-Political News

Sacramento · Tuesday 22 September 2026

Lagos State and California have signed a sister-state partnership. Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu signed with the California assemblyman Matt Haney at the Leland Stanford Mansion in Sacramento, after the state legislature passed Assembly Concurrent Resolution 129 to enable it. The framework covers technology, creative industries, climate, education, trade, infrastructure, health and agriculture.

city skyline bridge water daytime Photograph by Simi Iluyomade via Unsplash.

The comparison Sanwo-Olu made

California has Hollywood, Lagos has Nollywood. California has Silicon Valley, Lagos has Yaba. It is a good line and it is not a small claim: Lagos is arguing that it is a peer economy to a US state with a larger output than most countries.

What a sister-state agreement actually is. A framework, not a contract. It creates standing channels between officials, makes delegations and trade missions routine rather than exceptional, and gives businesses on both sides an institutional introduction. What it does not do is move money. Every specific deal still has to be negotiated separately by somebody who was going to do it anyway.

Where the value would actually show up

Possible gain	How you would know
Nollywood and California studio co-production	A named film with both credits
Yaba startups reaching US investors	Funding rounds with California funds
Student and faculty exchange	A published programme and a cohort
Climate and transport technology	Equipment actually installed in Lagos

All four are checkable in eighteen months. Most twinning agreements produce none of them.

Lagos already has the creative industry and the engineers. What it has never had is the routine institutional contact that turns both into export earnings.

The honest caveat

Nigeria has signed a great many memoranda of understanding with a great many jurisdictions, and the great majority have produced a photograph and nothing else. This one has a legislative resolution behind it, which is more than most, and it will still be judged on whether anybody can name a project in a year.

Reporting: THISDAY, Punch Newspapers, Tribune Online and PM News Nigeria.

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