By Biodun Busari
The University of Lagos and its Ugandan counterpart, Makerere University have formed a partnership that will combat air pollution across African cities.
Both universities launched a consortium that is saddled with providing solutions for improving capacity for air quality monitoring and management across five countries including Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda, Burundi and Cameroon.
The project was made known in a statement titled, ‘Establishing regional air quality networks to advance participatory and evidence-informed solutions in African cities’ by the consortium’s Marketing and Communications Lead, Maclina Birungi.
It partly read, “AirQo Project of Makerere University in partnership with the Air Quality Monitoring Research Group (AQMRG) from the University of Lagos and Urban Better Lab Innovation Africa, University of Pretoria, have launched a city-focused consortium to scale up participatory and evidenced-based approach to tackling air pollution across African cities.”
“This pioneering multi-region partnership is an Africa-led collaboration and emphasizes the need to strengthen regional networks for sustained collaborations and will enable the partners to co-develop solutions for improving capacity for air quality monitoring and management across five (5) countries in Eastern, Central, and Western Africa including Uganda, Burundi, Cameroon, Ghana and Nigeria.”
It added, “The consortium is supported by the US Department of State, with an established history of pioneering continuous air quality monitoring in data-hungry cities through the US Embassies across Africa.
“This partnership will build a ‘regional community of practice to convene air quality experts, decision-makers, community groups, the private sector, and other air quality practitioners and stakeholders to create knowledge and develop best practices to (i) improve air quality monitoring, modeling, forecasting, and data management; (ii) expand awareness and understanding of air quality issues; and (iii) develop and implement air quality management frameworks and clean air solutions across scales.’”
In tackling the regional environmental pollution, the group added, “We will establish regional air quality management hubs through collaborations with the partners in order to improve capacity in air quality management across Africa.”