By Chesa Chesa
A new policy analysis has warned that the rapid expansion of gambling in low-income communities across Nigeria, Ghana and Sierra Leone is deepening economic hardship among young people and potentially feeding debt, youth restiveness and some forms of criminality.
The analysis, authored by Joshua Biem, Senior Policy and Research Analyst at Nextier, and Olive Aniunoh, a Legal, Policy and Research Consultant at Nextier, said betting shops had increasingly become a familiar feature of slums, motor parks and informal settlements across West African cities.
The authors argued that the concentration of betting outlets in such communities was linked to the economic vulnerability of residents, particularly young people facing limited employment opportunities and weak social protection.
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.
It said the growth of the betting industry had coincided with a broader youth employment crisis, creating what it described as an uncomfortable relationship between economic exclusion and 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.
