Crawling through a Lagos traffic jam listening to 1,000 irate motorists blasting out a chorus of frustration on their car horns rates as one of the least relaxing ways to spend an afternoon in Nigeria.

However, for a glimpse of the infrastructure crisis afflicting Africa, there are few better vantage points. Bus drivers snarled in “go slows” jostle for space on crumbling roads; pedestrians hop across open drains; women haul buckets of water from boreholes; wires snake across tin rooftops as generators belch oily smoke.