Economies of Sale: Aspirational Igbo Nigerian Mercantilism Across the Global South

thousands of energetic, young Igbo Nigerian men, seeking to strike rich. While they are perhaps most notoriously known as the innovators of the “I am a Nigerian Prince” email scam phenomenon, the vast majority make their livelihood by sourcing goods currently not mass-manufactured in Africa and importing them to the continent. The dissertation first examines the global emergence of this mercantile generation from the turbulent petro-state of Nigeria, where Igbos are mercurially stereotyped as a commercially-inclined ethnic group with secessionist aspirations. The second part of the dissertation examines how young male Igbo wholesale merchants’ individualistic yet systematic travel across the Middle East and Asia in the last two decades has decentralized and reconfigured commodity distribution in Nigeria, which was formerly monopolized by colonial and/or corporate entities importing primarily from the West. In a world where salaried work and waged labor are increasingly insufficient to fully employ youth, and with the spectacular rise of e-commerce platforms and mega-retailers, the possibilities of economic value generated by commodity distribution networks should be under scrutiny across different disciplines, including anthropological ethnographic investigation. The dissertation is based on a total of 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork amongst select clusters of Igbo Nigerian merchants, conducted between 2012-2015 primarily in Nigeria, as well as the Nigerian trade and residential areas in three Global South trade sites: Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Guangzhou, China; and Istanbul, Turkey. I am applying for the SEED dissertation writing fellowship to complete the writing stage of my dissertation.