GEO-6 for Youth: Africa
Divine Agborli
Key Messages
Air pollution is responsible for approximately 7 million deaths annually around the world, 600,000 of which are recorded in Africa. Africa must address this through sustainable solutions such as better-ventilated housing and clean cooking stoves. The involvement of youth in the procurement and distribution of clean cooking stoves can be a path to economic empowerment.
The transport sector is a major contributor to air pollution in Africa. Youth should be on the forefront of lobbying for and utilizing non- motorised transport like cycling.
Energy created through solar PV cells, landfill gas, and biomass plants, create more jobs per unit of energy than energy created from fossil fuels. Jobs in renewable energy can be created along the sector’s value chain: the production of inputs like tools and chemicals; manufacture and distribution of equipment; or services that include project management, installation, operation, and maintenance.
The inability of young people to successfully navigate the rigorous climate funding process leaves their climate action impaired. It would be prudent for global climate funds to have customised funding mechanisms that specifically target young people in Africa, or to peg a youth-funding conditionality on funds given to nationally-accredited agencies, compelling them to fund youth initiatives.
2.1 Introduction
Air pollution is a major challenge in Africa and across the world. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that air pollution causes approximately 7 million deaths annually, 600,000 of which are recorded in Africa (UNEP 2016a). New data from the WHO report on air quality in May 2018 shows that globally, nine out of ten people breathe in air containing high levels of pollutants (World Health Organization [WHO] 2018).
People living in towns and cities of the Copperbelt Province of Zambia, for example, are exposed to a variety of pollutants, such as SO2, that is emitted during copper smelting and subsequent production of sulphuric acid, all of which are associated with respiratory problems (Ncube et al 2012). In Addis Ababa, the rapidly expanding transport sector together with fast urbanization, are among the major drivers of air quality degradation. As a result, acute upper respiratory infections increased by 47.18 per cent annually. In addition, Addis Ababa’s chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases (COPD) and pneumonia rates have increased annually by about 53.44 and 24.89 per cent respectively (Tarekegn et al. 2018). As of 2013, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) estimated the economic cost of ambient air pollution in Africa at US$215 billion calculated as healthcare costs, sick leave days, reduced economic output, and loss of manpower, among other parameters (Roy 2016).
2.2 Youth role in addressing air pollution
Urban areas continue to record unhealthy air quality (Strosnider et al. 2017) partly due to issues like traffic congestion (Zhang 2010)
18 Traffic in Accra, Ghana
and poor waste management (Fundació ENT 2015). The transport sector is a major contributor to air pollution in Africa (UNEP 2016b) as well as greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This state of affairs is attributed to the importation of inefficient fuel, used vehicles, inadequate vehicle-import regulation policies and standards, low purchasing power, and loss of urban forests that act as city lungs.
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