This year the Africa Clean Air Forum, a flagship event organized by the Africa Clean Air Network (AfriCAN) and its partners, brought together more than 500 participants from over 47 countries for four days of dialogue, learning, and cross-border exchange. City leaders, policymakers, researchers, and international partners gathered under a shared mission: unlocking investments in clean air solutions to improve public health and build healthier African cities.
The timing could not be more critical. As air pollution severely threatens public health across Africa, funding to fight it continues to be scarce. In fact the Clean Air Fund’s State of Global Air Quality Funding 2025 Report reveals that the African region received less than 1% of global air quality funding—even with pollution levels skyrocketing across the continent.
To address this funding gap, Christa Hasenkopf, Director of the EPIC Clean Air Program and its EPIC Air Quality Fund, opened a key plenary session titled “Show Us The Money! Overcoming Funding Barriers for Clean Air” with a challenge to the audience: “Imagine you’ve just been given a billion dollars to do good. What would make an issue attractive to you?” This session unpacked how clean air leaders can bridge the gap by leaning into health and economic returns, stepping outside traditional networks through public advocacy, and tailoring proposals so they fit a funder’s exact goals as their missing puzzle piece.
Hasenkopf also co-chaired a session titled “Global Call to Open Air Quality Data” alongside Engineer Bainomugisha, Professor of Computer Science and the Chair of the Department of Computer Science at Makerere University. Participants discussed how limited access to actionable, open air quality data leaves billions without the evidence needed to protect public health and tackle pollution. To bridge this gap, this session introduced the Five Principles for Clean Air Action:
- Advancing representative and sustained monitoring;
- Ensuring open-ready systems, data ownership and sovereignty
- Upholding data quality and integrity;
- Adopting standard protocols and harmonized data formats; and
- Translating open data into clean air action.
By the end of the session, one takeaway stood out: transitioning from closed to fully open air quality data systems is key to unlocking stronger policies, economic benefits, and improved public health outcomes.
To support community-level impact and knowledge exchange, the EPIC Air Quality Fund also brought a delegation of more than 20 awardees and partner representatives to South Africa. The delegation shared first-hand experiences, highlighted recent project milestones, and engaged in peer-to-peer learning with international clean air practitioners.
“One of the most powerful things I’ve observed with the 31 EPIC Air Quality Fund Awardees in 19 countries over these past 18 months is how they help each other do more and work faster when it comes to using open data as a lever for national clean air policy change,” said Hasenkopf. “They are using open data to drive real national level change—and rapidly. They show that clean air—and the people most affected by air pollution—are worth investing in.”
A major highlight of the Forum was the closing ceremony, where 7 out of the 31 EPIC Air Quality Fund awardees were honored as pioneering environmental leaders for driving national-level impact and transforming how their nations address air pollution. Among the seven pioneers are leaders from The Gambia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Pakistan, Malawi, Nigeria, and Liberia. Not only did they successfully expand their country’s air quality monitoring infrastructure, but they also opened up data to the public, and are actively driving national-level impact in collaboration with a network of partners. The seven EPIC Air Quality Fund awardees include:
- Permian Health Lung Institute (The Gambia)
- WASARU in collaboration with Columbia University (Democratic Republic of the Congo)
- Ghana Environmental Protection Agency (Ghana)
- The Urban Unit (Pakistan)
- Malawi University of Business and Applied Sciences (Malawi)
- Lagos Metropolitan Area Transport Authority (Nigeria)
- United Methodist University and Kigali Collaborative Research Centre (Liberia).
Ahead of the main summit, air quality experts from Africa and beyond gathered for a low-cost sensor workshop that focused on deploying monitoring systems and translating data into policy action. The discussion engaged with the technical, institutional, and human factors that keep data flowing and put it to use, with panelists sharing real-world examples from Uganda, Malawi, and Honduras. The EPIC Air Quality Fund Awardee Lily Ama Appiagyei shared Clean Air One Atmosphere’s experiences launching a reference grade monitoring network in Malawi. Awardee Ricardo Andres Pineda Guzman of Sustenta Honduras described the role that launching Central America’s largest monitoring network is playing in building momentum for Honduras’ first national air quality standard, while awardee Alex Nyabakira of Kampala Capital City and AirQo colleagues described how government-civil society partnerships around data can drive change.
Together, these global insights and practical lessons highlight a vital truth: air pollution is a global problem, but its solutions lie in hyper-local action, sustained investment, and transparent, accurate data that drives national policy.