My experience at CAF2025

I had the privilege of attending the Clean Air Forum 2025, held in Nairobi, Kenya, from 15th to 17th July. Previous forums happened in Kampala, Uganda, and Lagos, Nigeria. The meeting brought together a room full of funders, policymakers, researchers, health workers, media representatives, government officials, and tech experts who are shaping how Africa thinks and acts about air quality and health. Some of my main takeaways from the event include the following. 

The Global South is keeping up or attempting to catch up in the hardware game, in efforts to carry out better air quality monitoring and have data. Companies in East and West Africa in partnership with funders in the Global North disseminate a significant number of low-cost sensors that measure PM2.5. These instruments, however, are limited to measuring only PM2.5. It is important that instrumentation used in the Global South be suitable for the region to produce accurate results. We therefore have initiatives like air quality Sensor Evaluation and Training Centre for West Africa (Afri-SET) that focus on calibration of air quality sensors for the African context, to ensure their accuracy. CodeforAfrica also promote projects that rely on DIY sensors to add on to data in different parts of Africa. At the conference there was significant representation from many of these companies, AirQo, and more, that are working on ensuring appropriate infrastructure is available for air quality monitoring in Africa, which gives a nod to the efforts Africa is putting in.   

There was also representation from India. A country with significant air pollution. They presented on a portable meteorological station. A device that would be pretty useful for a country like Kenya that has inconsistent meteorological data. I had the privilege of visiting the Kenya Meteorological Department with this group and see the potential collaboration that could happen. 

There was a notable lack of healthcare professionals in the space. While there was representation from health research institutions and doctors interested in the air pollution research space, there was little talk about health data use to quantify the impact of air quality on health. This tracks back to the earlier findings of my PhD, where there is a disconnect between major stakeholders in the interdisciplinary space, and a lack of cohesive discussions together to discuss how advances in each discipline could be useful to the other. For example how digitization of health records currently underway in multiple african countries, could be beneficial to the environmental side or how they could work together to get better correlation data.  one-sided conversations around solutions for one field. 

There is a need to have better discussions and training around open data, and come up with policies that protect each stakeholder. There are a lot of fears among industries, research institutions, and governments about the consequences of transparency. Fear by industries of being used as an example if their pollution levels exceed set standards, while other industries lie, or faster analysis and publication with data that research institutions struggled to obtain, and more. Therefore, open, air quality data remains a major issue in African countries.  

At the end of the conference, I could not help but wonder, in a space that is heavily reliant on funding from the global north, whose responsibility, therefore, is air quality and health growth in Africa? The funder or the funded? While there are multiple efforts from the African countries to stand on their own two feet, Global North funding still holds up a lot of the air quality research space. Numerous African countries rely on this funding to purchase equipment for data collection and research. While there is some engagement from governments, many still direct resources to other pressing needs, such as infectious diseases. Air quality research is currently limited to particulate matter research, as funding is allocated to low-cost sensors that only collect PM2.5 data. The funding rarely covers reference-grade monitors or maintenance costs, as well as larger monitors for gaseous elements and other types of pollutants. A significant conversation centered on the need for source attribution to gain a clearer picture of the pollutant sources in African countries and their impact. Which makes sense, granted, their different pollution profiles. 

Therefore, do we settle for just available, albeit inaccurate, data, which is a burden of low-cost sensors that are not collocated, or fewer but more accurate data, with fewer higher-grade monitors? Funding also only covers hotspots, such as Nairobi in Kenya, leaving other regions unattended and thereby providing a distorted and incomplete truth of an area, which results in poor strategies and inaccurate policies. And as focus switches around the globe or in better-resourced regions to ultrafine particles, you can't help but think about how and when the gap will be closed.

It is clear that there is a definite need for better communication of responsibility between stakeholders, as this relationship and flow of information are what result in growth and sustainability. 

I had the opportunity to contribute to an open session discussing the barriers to better collaboration and policy engagement in air quality management between the Global North and South. Given the significant findings from my research, I had the opportunity to suggest an investigation of socio-technical factors that influence the space and incorporate these findings into funding models and timelines. These differences have been observed between the Global North and South, and a proper understanding of them would inform better and more permanent outcomes.

Finally, there is a need to push governments, and when multiple voices speak collectively, this facilitates mobility or action from the government. Considering that most governments in the Global South are not primarily concerned with air quality, focusing efforts on other issues such as infectious diseases, their involvement is crucial. Researchers, policy-makers, and the media shared how they engaged their governments in Uganda, Kenya, and Nigeria, influencing their participation in the space. There was also a note to involve more citizens and student researchers in the space. 

There is still a lot to do in the field. As the climate changes and the world becomes increasingly populated, the accurate impact of air quality on health is crucial for informing better policies. And even though Africa is playing the catch-up game, the Global North has a significant effect on how far and fast this progress occurs, thereby underscoring the need for better collaboration and understanding.