ABUJA– A new policy analysis has warned that the fast-growing gambling industry in low-income areas of Nigeria, Ghana, and Sierra Leone is worsening economic hardship for young people and may be driving increased debt, youth unrest, and certain kinds of crime.
Betting shops have become a common sight in slums, motor parks, and informal settlements across West African cities, the analysis by Joshua Biem, Senior Policy and Research Analyst at Nextier, and Olive Aniunoh, Legal, Policy and Research Consultant at Nextier, found.
The authors argued that betting shops clustered in these communities because residents–especially young people with few job prospects and minimal social support–were economically vulnerable.
According to the report, Nigeria’s gambling industry is now one of the largest in Africa, with industry estimates putting overall betting revenue at as much as $3.63 billion in 2025, while more than 60 million Nigerians, mostly aged between 18 and 40, are said to bet regularly.
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It said the expansion of the betting industry has occurred alongside a worsening youth unemployment crisis, producing a troubling link between economic exclusion and increased gambling.
“Gambling functions less as a pathway out of poverty than as a coping mechanism for it,” the authors argued, noting that betting could deepen indebtedness and feed informal criminal economies when young people turn to gambling as an alternative source of income.
The authors recommended harmonising gambling regulations, strengthening age and identity verification, restricting the density and location of betting outlets in vulnerable communities and improving intelligence-led monitoring of betting clusters associated with debt-driven theft, cultism or fraud.
They also called for targeted livelihood, vocational training and financial literacy programmes in slums and peri-urban communities, arguing that such interventions would address the economic desperation being monetised by gambling operators.
Gambling companies, they said, should also introduce stronger responsible-gambling measures, including self-exclusion systems, spending limits and advertising rules that prevent the targeting of economically vulnerable youths.
The report concluded that betting shops do not “manufacture criminality” on their own but tend to cluster in communities where economic desperation is greatest.
It warned that unless governments address unemployment, debt, weak social protection and urban marginalisation, the continued expansion of an under-regulated betting economy could reinforce rather than reduce the social pressures driving youth restiveness across West Africa.
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