Pointing the way to cleaner air in West Africa

As one of the world’s fastest growing populations, West Africa is expected to reach about 800 million people by 2050 – more than double its current population. A consequence of the region’s skyrocketing population levels is increasing industrialisation and urbanisation, with the accompanying rise in air pollution and the effects that has on people’s health and the environment as a whole.

However, the impact of the expected rapid increase in man-made emissions in the West African region is still largely unknown. The EU-funded DACCIWA project recognised the urgent need to increase awareness of the problem and develop strategies to combat environmental risks. Therefore, it worked to provide a comprehensive scientific assessment of how pollution in West Africa affects people’s health, the environment and the climate. The DACCIWA team published a final report outlining its policy-relevant findings at the end of 2018.

The problem of air pollution

According to the researchers, small particle concentrations often exceed World Health Organization limits in southern West African cities. The likely culprits here are waste burning at landfill sites, cars and domestic fires used for cooking, which present significant risks to people’s health and exacerbate common medical problems. These concentrations increase even further in the dry season from dust blown in from the Sahara Desert and smoke from the burning of agricultural land.

“The implications of our findings are damning and worth identifying or putting in place reliable and efficient structures and policies that will help mitigate these negative impacts,” says Leonard Amekudzi of Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in a news item published on ‘SciDev.Net’.

Adding to the problem caused by local emissions, smoke from fires burning in Central Africa travels thousands of kilometres towards the West African coast during the summer monsoon season. These air particles alter the atmosphere, causing less sunlight to reach the ground. “This influences air circulation, cloud formation and precipitation probability,” explains Prof. Peter Knippertz of project coordinator Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in a news release posted on ‘EurekAlert!’. “In the long run, this could affect food production, water and electricity.”

To draw their conclusions, the research team conducted extensive air pollution measurements in West Africa in June and July 2016 using meteorological balloons and research aircraft. Urban pollution was also measured from four sites between 2015 and 2017.

What needs to be done

In their report, the DACCIWA (Dynamics-aerosol-chemistry-cloud interactions in West Africa) researchers make a number of recommendations on how to tackle the West African air pollution issue. They highlight the need to improve air quality by reducing domestic burning emissions and to work with Central African countries to decrease their significant fire emissions. They also make recommendations on how to improve emission inventories and observations, and emphasise the importance of supporting further research activities.

For more information, please see:
DACCIWA project website