Lagos, Nigeria
No cash to be found: With their country facing a shortage of cash, desperate Nigerians have begun sleeping outside their banks so they’ll be first in line to get to the freshly stocked ATMs. The Central Bank redesigned the banknotes last year and announced a deadline for turning in old currency, partly to bring the cash being hoarded by individuals and companies back into the financial system and partly to encourage people to switch to making payments online. Some 40 percent of Nigerians don’t have bank accounts and use cash for everything. But as the deadline to swap out old naira approached, there wasn’t enough of the new stuff available, and the economy is now in chaos. “Buses want cash—now I have to trek everywhere,” hairdresser Lilian Ineh, 26, told the BBC.