Umoja, Kibos, Mowlem and Railways most polluted estates
By George Kebaso, July 16, 2025Helen, a city resident commuting on Ngong’ Road on Tuesday, July 15, 2025, was among thousands of public transport users going through a cloud of fumes, seated in a bus she boarded at the Kencom area in Nairobi, just as the three-day global Clean-Air Forum kicked off about 3 kilometres away.
The transport sector was identified as the biggest contributor to air pollution, with Mowlem and Railways residential areas of Nairobi and Kisumu, respectively, emerging as very unhealthy, according to real-time results obtained from air quality monitoring stations installed in some parts of the country.
This is courtesy of Clean Air for all African cities- AirQo Company’s installed stations.
Air pollution experts have also warned that people with respiratory conditions may not survive in Umoja estate in Nairobi and Kibos in Kisumu, areas described by AirQo as unhealthy settlements.
The experts are concerned that, lack of implementation of the existing policies to avert air pollution, open burning of hospital waste could lead to antimicrobial resistance (AMR), a serious global health threat where bacteria, viruses, and fungi evolve to resist the effects of drugs designed to kill them.
“I’m very sure you don’t have to be told that transport is a major issue. If you just stand next to a major road, you’ll see the kind of emissions coming from vehicles. That is the Number One source of pollutants in African cities,” World Resources Institute (WRI)’s Country Representative for Kenya, Dr George Mwaniki, said on July 15, 2025, at a Nairobi hotel, during the beginning of the three-day forum.
He said open burning of waste is huge also, but pointed out that the biggest challenge is how to manage solid waste.
Hospital waste, according to Dr Mwaniki, raises issues when burning medicine affects antibiotic resistance in the environment.
Embracing e-mobility
Mwaniki, while also noting that the transport sector was showing some good indicators, various forums are unearthing a number of challenges that were never thought to be serious in the air pollution space, that go beyond air pollution.
“For example, when we did our work in our studies in Nairobi, and hospital waste emerged as a major source of air pollution because of the other implications of that,” he said, identifying e-mobility shifts across Africa as one of the good indicators in addressing air pollution.
In Kenya, there’s a big initiative to do that shift, especially for two and three-wheelers.
The big question, according to Prof Bainomugisha from Makerere University, is how to improve the quality of air in the cities.
“We have to address vehicle emissions. So, we have to think about how we also support vehicle owners to kind of do that transition,” he said, pointing out that it is not uncommon to see old unroadworthy vehicles still on the road, emitting black soot.
He called for a mindset shift to include different stakeholders, policymakers, and governments, to go beyond the data and translate this into action.
County of Nairobi Chief Officer in charge of Environment Geoffrey Mosiria said that he will ensure vehicles switch off their engines when picking commuters at the various bus stages, to minimise pollution from the fumes.
“We will ensure enforcement will make all vehicles within the CBD, if not in motion, to switch off their engines,” he told People Daily.
The air quality experts from across Africa and globally are convening in Nairobi for the third edition of the CLEAN-Air Forum to discuss the pressing issue of air pollution on the continent.
Held under the theme ‘Partnerships for Clean Air Solutions’, the forum will run until July 17, 2025, bringing together air quality communities of practice, including government leaders, researchers, civil society representatives, city planners, development partners, youth, and private sector actors.
It is organised by AirQo, a pan-African air quality research initiative at Makerere University, the Health Effects Institute (HEI), and World Resources Institute Africa (WRI), in collaboration with Nairobi City County Government. The Forum builds on the success of previous editions held in Kampala (2023) and Lagos (2024).
According to a recent HEI Scoping Review titled “Health Effects of Air Pollution in East Africa”, air pollution led to approximately 294,000 deaths in 2021 across the region, making it the second-largest contributor to mortality, surpassed only by malnutrition.
Despite Nairobi’s status as a continental environmental hub, the city still has fewer than 100 publicly accessible air quality monitors.
These monitors are largely deployed through collaborative efforts involving AirQo, Breathe Cities, UNEP, and the GEOHealth Hub, among others, in partnership with the city government to help fill critical data gaps.