There is a growing focus on the importance of tackling air pollution as an entry point for both health and climate resilience in Lagos. Currently, there are multiple actors working towards a common goal ranging from government, civil society, academia and the private sector. In this moment, a timely opportunity presented itself to accelerate and maximise the impact of various air quality projects across Lagos.
Following the inaugural workshop in June 2022, on 19 September 2023, as part of phase 2 of the #UrbanBetter #Cityzens initiative and the #CleanAir4Africa project, we ran a stakeholder workshop in Lagos with 26 representatives from government (including transport, environment, health, parks, resilience), civil society and academia.
In recognition of the need for coordinated action across the multiple actors and sectors working to address air pollution in Lagos, the interactive workshop aimed to achieve several crucial objectives, all aimed at fostering a shared understanding around participatory air quality management, mapping the air quality outcome space in Lagos and aligning and maximising the impact of air quality projects in Lagos.
Together, we mapped out the landscape of ongoing and planned air quality initiatives, identified priority areas for deployment of low cost air quality sensors, acheived a shared undertanding of the potential of youth citizen scientists to play a critical role in tackling air pollution as a novel approach to developing a participatory air quality management system, and agreed a plan on action on next steps to ensure ongoing shared learning and knowledge exchange.
The workshop, funded by the Clean Air Fund and the United States Department of State, was organised by UrbanBetter in partnership with AirQo, University of Makerere, Uganda; University of Lagos, Nigeria and the University of Cambridge, UK.
