Bolaji Fatai has never set foot in an airplane, but that hasn't stopped him from building his own remote-controlled model aircraft from trash and sending it soaring over the sprawl and chaos of Lagos, Nigeria's commercial capital.
On a recent cloudy day, the single-propeller plane withstood cross-winds high above a sandy football field and swooped low over the heads of onlookers in Oworonshoki, the poor neighbourhood where Fatai lives in the east of the city.
He bought the propeller and remote control in a shop, but constructed the body, wings, tail and fin from pieces of recycled styrofoam gathered in dump sites and held together with sticky tape. The wingspan is about one metre.
"I started this when I was seven. I started picking things around, making some little projects,"…
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Sunday Independent (Digital) - 1 Issue, 2023-04-23