Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, is a primary marketplace for a cosmetics trade centred round pores and skin lightening. In February of this yr Moji Adeyeye, director normal of Nigeria’s National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, declared the follow “a national health emergency.”1 The risks of pores and skin lightening embody diabetes, hypertension, neuropathy, and hepatic or renal toxicity.2 And cosmetics aren’t the one merchandise to take care of.

In neighbouring Ghana, the Food and Drugs Authority was compelled to concern a public warning over what it described as “the use of skin lightening agents in the form of pills and tablets being used by consumers including pregnant women with the erroneous impression that it would lighten the skin of their unborn babies.”3 For many mother and father, lighter pores and skin merely interprets to improved social and financial prospects for his or her offspring.

Skin lightening, because the title implies, is the method of creating one’s pores and skin color lighter, often with lotions or lotions. It’s a recognised medical intervention used to deal with particular pigmentary issues,4 however its extra profitable market is as a beauty offered to individuals who imagine that lighter pores and skin color will enhance their prospects in life, love, or employment—fuelled by many years of ingrained cultural bias and discrimination towards folks with darker pores and skin.

With merchandise catering to virtually each socioeconomic bracket, pores and skin lightening is a billion greenback market in Africa and Asia and is headed for enlargement,5 making it a mammoth process for governments …