Uchafuzi wa hewa*

… Then you do not know the world.**

Readers will know we like to be locally grounded while also looking globally for inspiration. So while some of our local initiatives are a bit stuck, we thought we would take a look at some of the inspiring work being done further afield - in particular in Africa.

Let’s start with monitoring. For a continent of 1.6 billion people, sensors probably number in the hundreds or low thousands - putting it at the same order of magnitude as the amount of monitoring around London, a city of 9 million people.

So, over at Air Aware Labs, while we like to talk about our product as being global, in reality the coverage in Africa is pretty patchy - parts of East Africa, plus South Africa, but many gaps. So a month ago, we gathered experts from across the continent to discuss how we can proceed.

We met with colleagues from Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda in the East, to Cameroon and Ghana in the West. We heard that data is not only sparse, but also fragmented, and with complexities over the principles of open data versus ownership of the data. But the potential to use the data for public health messaging, infrastructure improvements and cleaner school environments was vast.

We also learnt more about some fantastic initiatives:

• UrbanBetter runs an Africa-led global movement of youth-centred citizen science and civic action supported by digital and social infrastructure

• Airqo provides accurate, hyperlocal, and timely air quality data with over 300 monitors installed, closing the data gap mentioned above

• International Student Environmental Coalition is a youth-led global network of over 30 countries that provides young people the resources, community, and organisational power to engage in grassroots movements for climate justice

• Clean Air (Africa) is a partnership of experts from academic, research, and clinical institutions from the UK, Cameroon, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Uganda.

And separately we met with:

• Breathe Accra, part of the Breathe Cities initiative of which London is a part, which aims to provide open access to hyperlocal air quality data and build capacity for monitoring and managing air quality and tracking air pollution-related diseases

• and Quali-breeze who are building a new initiative in Ghana to generate real-time exposure data and thereby contribute to improved environmental and public health outcomes.

Between these, there is the potential to create a huge continental movement.

It’s important to mention that many of these initiatives are supported by friends at OpenAQ, University of Chicago Energy Policy Institute, Clean Air Fund and Health Effects Institute. Yet philanthropic funding for air pollution work remains vanishingly small compared to philanthropy as a whole, and relative to the return on investment that could be made. What funding exists is overly focused on richer parts of the world, such as North America.

So what can we do, especially sitting so far from the continent? Louise’s time working at the African Union has made her not only passionate to support where possible, but also very aware that solutions can’t be imposed from the outside. And those outside the continent may well ask, why are we attempting this when the commercial case might be less obvious? (An attempt at an answer here.) However, the vision for our work at Air Aware Labs is to bring hyper-local data at global scale… so we will continue finding ways forward!

We’ve had some nice bits of recognition recently for our work at Air Aware Labs. We’ve been shortlisted for Entrepreneur of the Year and for Best Investee Company - we will find out at Parliament on 24 June! That one is in the lap of the judges, but if you’d like to contribute to us having a good week regardless… please vote and help us win £10k at Reset Connect that very same day! To get the full back-story of our work, this recent podcast on CEO Uncensored gets inside what we’re doing over at the Labs!

Readers paying close attention will have noticed that we’ve mentioned UrbanBetter twice in two weeks. We will bring the latest on our event with them during London Climate Action Week (probably Sunday 21 June) as soon as possible - email us on hello@airawarelabs.com if you want to hear first!

Meanwhile, here is a fantastic event for young people on Clean Air Day next Thursday - please spread the word! And you can hear Louise speak at this event at University of East London on 22 June.

*Air pollution in Swahili - possibly a more useful phrase than you might think!

**Quote attributed to Mariam Makeba

***Part of a quote from Kwame Nkrumah: “We face neither East nor West: we face forward”