Event details:
📅Date: 8–9 July 2026
📍Venue: Conference Room 9, UNEP Headquarters, Gigiri, Nairobi
🤝Organized by: UNEP, in partnership with the Environmental Compliance Institute (ECI)
👥Audience: Policymakers, technical experts, industry representatives, researchers and civil society from EAC member states, Liberia and Morocco
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Background
Across East Africa, air pollution has become the region's second-leading risk factor for death, linked to an estimated 294,000 fatalities in 2021 alone. Road transport is a major contributor to that burden: globally, vehicle emissions were linked to nearly 700,000 premature deaths and 250,000 new childhood asthma cases in 2024 — equivalent to one death every 45 seconds.
Experts warn that without faster action, low- and middle-income countries stand to bear a growing share of this toll even as wealthier nations clean up their fleets.
The challenge is acute in cities like Kampala, Uganda, where the population nearly doubles each day as commuters pour in, and pollution levels can run at least eight times above healthy limits.
It was here that the TRUE Initiative conducted the first real-world, remote-sensing study of vehicle emissions on the African continent — giving policymakers a clearer, evidence-based picture of where urban air pollution comes from, and the tools to act on it.
