Data as a leverage: how air quality monitoring can shift public discourse and inform policy response in Kenya
For years, conversations about air pollution in Kenya, as in many other low- and middle-income countries, often began and ended with one solution: plant more trees. It was a comforting response. Tree planting is visible, familiar and easy to rally behind. But its simplicity also reduced a complex public health crisis to a single environmental intervention. It obscured the transport systems, household energy choices, industrial emissions, waste-burning practices and institutional failures that shape the air Kenyans breathe every day. By 2023, poor air quality was estimated to contribute to approximately 23,000 deaths annually in Kenya, with household air pollution accounting for a substantial share of the burden. Yet air pollution is still too often discussed as if it were only an environmental concern. It is also a transport problem, an energy problem, a climate problem and, above all, a public health crisis. For a long time, however, that crisis remained abstract. What changed? Data. ...