Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa top list of most polluted African countries
A new study on air pollution and disease burden has ranked Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa as the most polluted countries in Africa.
The report prepared by Greenpeace Africa and Greenpeace MENA and titled, “Major Air Polluters in Africa Unmasked’ revealed that these countries exhibit large disease burdens linked to air pollution.
Further details indicate that many African countries produce some of the worst nitrogen dioxide and Sulphur dioxide linked to thermal power plants.
While Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa were identified as countries with some of the highest mortality rates linked to fossil fuel air pollution, other NO2 emission hotspots were identified in other African countries.
South Africa was found to be hub to two of the world’s ten largest NO2 emission hotspots. Nine of these hotspots are linked to thermal power stations and the remaining one linked to a smelter complex in Mali.
South Africa hosts four of these power stations, Morocco hosts two and Egypt and Zimbabwe own one each.
According to Green Peace Africa, about 1.1 million premature deaths have been linked to air pollution annually.
