 Broadcast is now starting. All attendees are in listen only mode. Good afternoon everybody. My name is Jake Reynolds and I'm responsible for research at the Institute for Sustainability Leadership at the University of Cambridge. Really big welcome to all of you who are able to attend this afternoon. A big thanks for making the time. We have a really interesting presentation ahead of us from Dr. Gabriel O'Cello who will get to in just a minute. He's one of our Prince of Wales Global Sustainability Fellows at the CISL working on air quality and funded by AstraZeneca who all of you will have heard of. Well, just to say a couple of things about the program before we get started with looking at all of the ins and outs of Gabriel's research. I think the thing about this particular presentation is that it encompasses an awful lot of sustainability issues in one project. So everything from understanding air quality and its impact on health but all the way through to the solutions in terms of how we might deal with different sources of air pollution which are affecting people's lives and of course that takes us into the whole area of green transition and in this case as you'll find out e-mobility and the electrification of transport in Gabriel's case in Sub-Saharan Africa. We're looking at the participation of the people who signed up for this event. I think there is something in it for everyone and I noticed the number of insurance companies, investment organizations, pharmaceutical sector, research organizations and indeed e-mobility startup in particular and financial institutions all expressed interest in this particular event and I'm thinking about the actual topic area whether it's green transition or working on solutions for improvement in health, job creation, mitigating climate change. This particular research touches on all of that so I hope there's something that everyone can take away. The Prince of Wales program overall started really in 2018. It's unusual in the university and the questions which it looks at are co-designed with industry so we very specifically set out at the start to think about research areas which have maximum potential for impact in the economy and that's absolutely the case in this particular example which we designed at the outset with a broad group which included AstraZeneca from the pharmaceutical and science industry. I think the thing to say about the program though is it sort of combines the University of Cambridge's strengths in research with a particular focus on impact which is not straightforward for researchers to achieve but I think if you listen carefully to Gabriel you'll see how he's going about that. It's a lot to do with stakeholder engagement, good communications and thinking about where the research thinking which we're generating is going to land and how best to engage with those stakeholders right at the beginning and throughout the research process rather than leave results to have their impact at the end of a project. So in terms of sort of the structure of the afternoon or in fact probably getting on for early evening for those joining us from at least parts of eastern Africa. We'll probably hear from Gabriel for about 20-25 minutes and then we'll get into Q&A and looking at the go-to meeting software which we're using for this meeting. I hope you're all navigating that effectively. There is a chat function and I would encourage you to put questions into that chat function so that we can hear from you. Anything on your mind as we go through, pop a question in and we'll come back to those questions after Gabriel's finished his presentation. So I think that's all from me. I've simply introduced Gabriel and he's given you a sort of in a nutshell version of what he's going to be talking about. I should just say briefly that Gabriel joined us from the Liverpool Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine where he did postdoctoral research and before that he did his PhD in the University of Aberdeen and obviously it has been greatly aided this research by the fact that Gabriel is a Ugandan national and knows the field if you like, knows the research site in this particular case, Campala in Uganda very very well and has a lot of prior experience of working with stakeholders including in the policy community. So he's excellently prepared for his fellowship here in Cambridge and I'm going to turn over to you Gabriel. You have the slides working. I'm going to go on mute and I look forward to what you have to say. Okay thanks a lot Jake and thanks for the wonderful introduction. Hello everyone, glad you could spare time and be with us for this webinar. As Jake introduced me my name is Gabriel O'Kello. I'm a Prince of Wales Global Sustainability Fellow in air quality and non-communicable diseases and my fellowship is exploring collaborative ways of co-designing interventions to address air pollution in Uganda at the moment. I'm currently working with stakeholders in policy, stakeholders in business, academia to generate evidence which evidence we are using to co-design strategies to address air pollution in the capital city of Uganda which is Campala and another secondary city in Uganda which is Ginger and we aim for these interventions to be not only holistic, we aim for them to be evidence-based but we also aim for interventions that can be replicated in other urbanizing cities in sub-Saharan Africa. My fellowship is funded by a philanthropic gift from AstraZeneca. So today I'll be explaining and taking you through one of the work streams of my fellowship which is looking at exploring pathways to a just transition to two-wheeled motorcycles which we commonly call border borders in the East African region. When you go to the West African region you might find another name being used, IE Okada. So with this presentation I will take you through the regional overview in terms of the numbers, how these border borders are being used within the region, the challenges that have come up with the accelerated adoption of these border borders and how some of these challenges have been addressed for some of the proposals that are on the table for addressing challenges from border borders. And then I will take you through the co-design approach that I together with the collaborators in this fellowship are using. I'll give you a glimpse of what we know so far and then explain to you a bit about the pilot of the transition to electric mobility and then finally we'll wrap it up with the potential enabling factors and barriers. So let's first start with the regional overview of the two-wheeled motorcycles which we commonly know as border borders in the East African region. We have approximately 4.7 million petrol-powered two-wheeled motorcycles in the region with Uganda taking a share of 1.2 million motorcycles and these motorcycles within the region carry approximately 75 million people through the congested cities of East Africa but also through the Peri-Urban and rural areas and some of the main reasons as to why these two-wheeled motorcycles form a very strong fabric in transportation within a mobility context is they save time due to their ability to maneuver and weave through the traffic as I'll show you some pictures in the following slides and also their ability to be able to maneuver the sometimes narrow roads in the different areas either within the city or in the rural areas giving them also the ability to access these remote areas. So how are these two-wheel motorcycles commonly known as border borders currently being utilized they're being utilized to transport people to and from work transport people from one area to another transporting school children from home to school and from school back to home within within different localities especially in the Peri-Urban and rural areas these border borders are also being used as ambulances to transport patients to to the hospitals or to the health centers and with the recent boom of e-commerce within the region border borders are really playing a pivotal point in not only delivery but in the last mile distribution in the various locations. The other substance to use border borders have been applied is monitoring of projects be it government projects or international aid projects within agriculture within forestry within local government etc so they are really really of very significant use within the mobility context in the sub-Saharan African settings border borders are also are also being used in transporting medical samples from rural health centers mainly rural health centers or smaller health centers to to the big health centers and that is reducing the turnaround time of getting results for for the for the patients and one of the other really really important important utilization for these border borders is that they have provided employment throughout the whole supply chain be it the riders the mechanics the the wholesalers the importers etc however with all these benefits border borders have also come with with challenges in the in the community and one of the biggest challenges is air pollution which is as a result of which is as a result of borders having both two-stroke and four-stroke engines that do not that do not efficiently burn the fuel so we having air pollution rapidly increasing within settings that these border borders are being used and when we breathe in these pollutants they cause both short-term and long-term respiratory illnesses from the from exacerbating illnesses like asthma to long-term illnesses like lung cancer these are also further going ahead to cause absence of children from school and also people from work and people are spending what would have actually been avoided on treating these diseases this air pollution is also causing premature deaths premature deaths not only in Uganda but all over the world and I've given some statistics for Uganda air pollution is responsible for over 30 000 deaths every year on the african continent that's approximately its air pollution is causing around 1.1 million deaths and globally air pollution is causing seven million deaths premature deaths every year now we need to sit back and let these numbers sink in to understand the sheer challenge of this cross-cutting issue that we are dealing with and to just bring that closer to to what we've been to what we've been exposed to in the past two years I've tried to bring those numbers and compare them with COVID from this from the World Health Organization data so COVID in the in the approximate two years it has been with us as killed approximately six million people compared to that air pollution which is all which is also killing seven million people every year in my opinion air pollution is another pandemic we have right beneath our noses as much as it is invisible most of the time the other challenge this air pollution contributes to climate change so it affects the environment the borders within these settings are also starting to contribute to congestion I'll just play for you a small clip the congestion within these settings because of the sheer numbers especially during the rush hours and also the maintenance of these border borders in unregulated garages is causing soil pollution as some of these oils are poured into the ground one of the other challenges that has come up as a result of using these borders has been you know physical injury and deaths as a result of accidents so with all these challenges next I would want us to look at you know some of the proposed challenges or some of the challenges that have been implemented to try and some of the interventions that have been implemented to try and tackle these challenges one of the major proposed one which keeps coming back and forth for the for the case of Kampala is you know having a border border free zone in the in the in the central business district and this surfaces once in a while and this is the this is the latest this is the latest proposed ban from borders in terms of decongesting the city center I think this will absolutely achieve that aim but in terms of tackling air pollution I I have my doubts as you just redistributing air pollution sources within the outskirts of the city center so the net effect on the whole city might not be significant in terms of air pollution the other you know the others interventions that have come up you know rigorous training of the riders by the different border border associations and different air rating companies in terms of safety in terms of riding and this has seen a reduction in the number of accidents that are being experienced another intervention has been a piloting of non-motorized corridors within the city to try and encourage non-motorized transport but a big question still lingers around when you're looking at all these challenges in that we still have for the case of Uganda we have 1.2 million petro-powered motorcycles within the country with with over 400,000 in the Kampala metropolitan area and we still have a huge number of these petro-powered motorcycles being imported every day and one of the considerations we're looking at with we have been looking at with the collaborating partners is how is the inclusivity of you know some of these interventions it is very important to note that much as the the border border riders are major contributors to air pollution by riding these motorcycles they are also victims of this air pollution because they are in proximity or the in proximity where these emissions where the air pollutants are being emitted so it's also good to put that into context so this leads us to the co-design approach in in this work stream where we've been where we are exploring pathways to transition to electric toilas and in this co-design I'm working with partners in academia to to obtain the air quality data from Kampala and analyzing it that's through Makere Air Corps we've been correlating the air quality data and health with the Makere Lang Institute and we are planning to model the potential effects of accelerated adoption of this electric transition with a group from the University of Birmingham we're working with the policy makers mainly the Ministry of Energy and Ministry of Transport to co-create an electric mobility policy guide because this is a relatively new technology within the country and there has to be standards around the batteries and the units that are coming in I will so working in collaboration with the Ministry of Health to obtain the health data which we are trying to explore how it correlates with the air pollution we are receiving one of the other things we intend to look at is to explore the cost-benefit analysis of this transition with the policy makers in terms of the physical impact for the you know for for the government the other partner we're working with is Mojo energies which is retrofitting the existing petrol powered motorcycles into electric and is also providing the charging infrastructure with these electric powered motorcycles being fed into the NFT mobility ecosystem NFT mobility is our business is the business partner we're working with so NFT is providing us an ecosystem for for operations of petrol powered and electric electric powered motorcycles and with this we're able to get first hand end user feedback from the riders themselves and we're able to get data being collected by the NFT mobility which and with all this data we we we keep on meeting with different collaborating partners to explore how we can we can continue co-designing this intervention whilst also looking at potential unintended consequences both positive and negative what do we know so far air pollution is a serious challenge in compiler and the fine particles in the outdoors are the annual averages at 12 times more than the recommended WHO limits what we have also found out that over 60 percent of the air pollution within compiler through a pilot over 60 percent comes from combustion sources which include motor vehicles motorcycles and also over 30,000 we're having over 30,000 premature deaths in Uganda from the electric transition side one of the one of the evidence we've generated is that with the pilot existing that running an electric motorbike is actually cheaper than running a petrol powered motorbike the current numbers are ranging are averaging seven dollars for the petrol powered versus five dollars for the electric per day and the other advantage the electric has that there is no changing clutches or oil every six to eight weeks and how is this retrofitting actually taking place I just want to give you an overview so the old petrol powered the old petrol powered motorcycle is taken to the retrofit garage this is that module it's stripped apart and then the the electric retrofit component is fitted plus the battery and then you have your electric motorcycle what what what benefits do we ever say from this one is there's zero tailpipe emission directly tackles the biggest one of the biggest challenges we're having in motorized the mobility which is air pollution and its related burden of disease and by also tackling the tailpipe emission we're mitigating climate change and contributing to Uganda's nationally diamond contributions also this electric transition from the pilot was seeing that it's increasing the income of the riders because they are spending less operationally but also because they are victims and they're in the front line in the proximity of the of the pollutants we've we also have a such that a reduction in local air pollution from mobility would also improve their that would also improve their health also every side is reduction in soil pollution caused by the unsafe disposal and one of the the unintended consequences we are we are seeing is the potential creation of tens of thousands of green jobs and I'll explain about each potential stepping of the job creation ecosystem in the in the next slide so this this transition potentially has can provide employment one for the for the retrofit providers you have people being employed there you have people being employed at the charge and swap stations is where the batteries are charged and then are swapped for those that have been depleted in power there's a potential employment for insurance providers who will be ensuring we're ensuring these assets in the payment process system because the the the riders come and pay for a battery that is fully charged there is a potential creation of employment there also and then with the people managing the the battery platform the battery support platform this platform which alerts the which which alerts the driver on a the percentage of charge he has on his battery but also b would be able to to alert him on the nearest charge station that is also potential for for job creation asset financing depending on on on the model being used there is a really huge potential for financing these assets and there's also potential in job creation in terms of people regulating the policy makers regulating the standards of batteries coming in the start the operational standards on ground and another area for job creation is the maintenance and repair so we are looking at a fully blown green ecosystem of job creation with this with this transition and what are some of the quite interesting enabling factors we found out from from our partners you know from the Ministry of Energy we found out that over 90 percent of our electricity is from renewable sources that is the hydro and solar which is which is a fantastic thing because your major source of electricity might have affects your net effect of electric transition as you move along the value chain we have a very vibrant youth population that is ready to take up these jobs so this will be closing the unemployment gap and there is practically minimal behaviour change for the border borders in translating to to electric however there are there are factors to consider in order to accelerate this adoption one is the huge financial cost in in setting up the infrastructure be it the charging infrastructure or the retrofit infrastructure or the training of the of the technicians themselves I know a module and NFT do a little bit of training and it's quite a bit from their numbers it's it doesn't come cheap then also from the policy and regulation angle this is a relatively new technology there needs to be a policy in in place to a regulate the the existing entities but also regulate the the newcomers and sort of set standards minimum standards along the value chain are there is also need of building capacity and skill there will be need to upscale and reskill the existing the existing engineers and people in the various in the various stages of the supply chain there is a new technology so there is need for continuous monitoring to identify a the data gaps in terms of in terms of the technology of the batteries in terms of the charging infrastructure etc and there is need for awareness the awareness about electric mobility is still low within within the country and one of the things that we need to plan for in the sub-saharan african context is to plan for the ewest because within a few years three to five years we shall start having exponential amounts of ewest so it is very very vital to start planning that from the onset as we plan for the acceleration we also plan for how that electric waste will be handled five years five years down the road and with that I really thank you for taking the time and I am happy to answer any questions or clarify on any discussion points thank you very much over to Jake thanks so much Gabriel really interesting let me just put my camera back on the um yeah I told you this um I told you this was a this was a piece of research that had many fingers in many different sustainability pies and I think you can see that they even the financing work because I did notice that um we have a number of financial institutions on the on the call also some energy companies and you can just see that this transition which Gabriel has outlined it's uh it's only feasible from a particularly from a climate perspective if the electricity going into the electrification of of the bikes is renewable I mean that's that's when you get the greatest wins and the greatest synergy across the energy system and the transport systems I think that's a good illustration um it's really interesting to hear from you as well Gabriel you know as an epidemiologist Gabriel is an epidemiologist he comes from a scientific background studying you know the progress of disease but he finds himself at the center of a a set of stakeholders working on the solutions to air quality or evolution I should say and that's that in itself is an interesting transition I think what what's a many of his colleagues in epidemiology would probably draw the line and say look I'm going to study the impact of air pollution on disease but not necessarily take that extra step to see how solutions can be built around work with stakeholders on the solutions rather than uh defining the problem in in ever more detail and that's something I really think is very valuable in the way that um Gabriel's working uh what I I mean there's quite a few questions which I'll just come to in a second because people have been um uh my colleague Jan has been uh reposting some of them to me to to keep up well I just wanted to ask is a very simple one to start with Gabriel the um the retrofit the retrofit it bikes the the bikes which are taken off the road and their engines are transitioned from uh you know petrol driven to electric that is in itself an interesting sustainability um opportunity because we're not talking about dependence on newly imported bikes and wasting the ones that the existing fleet we're talking about converting the existing fleet which in my minds is I wanted to ask whether that is in itself uh something which has got environmental um performance uh you know as it as its driver rather than sort of waste a lot of bikes and sort of let them decay and and become residual you've actually got a process it seems to actually you know modernize them and modernize the existing fleet which I think is significant and I did just want to ask on the on the actual bikes can they stand up to a typical you know campala tropical storm would with all that electric components have they've been proofed against that are they is there anything about the road system in somewhere like campala which is not always um as as its citizens would like that would mean that these bikes were any more vulnerable given the kind of some of the sophistication of their engines etc so a couple of questions there about the bikes yeah thanks a lot Jake and I want to answer the question of retrofitting the exist petrol fuel motorbikes I think there is a direct net gain if we are retrofitting the existing to electric as opposed to bringing in a new electric motorbike and probably pushing this old one to you know to either a rural area or outside the city in my in my in my research I just as a person researching about air quality I just look at that as redistributing the the the source of air pollution from one area to another but not you may not have an anet anet effect in trying to reduce air pollution so I think with the retrofit a you're having a net effect with reducing that with eliminating the tail pipe but also you're providing I would call it like extended life to this motorcycle but your following question is actually very important one about how these electric bikes might be able to handle the you know the roads in in a typical sub-saharan african setting like Kampala where we have we have the challenge of potholes and you know we're talking about electric components fused together we're talking about rainices on where the water floods and then we have dry season where there's a lot of dust so one of you know this is relatively a new pilot but one of the directions we've taken in the research is we're partnering with a team from Oxford Brooks that is involved in sustainable transport frame design and this is their bread and butter this is this is what this is what they do and the aim of that is to to in to in the future design a frame a locally a locally designed frame meant for the terrain of sub-saharan Africa so that is the that is the direction the researchers has taken in in terms of having a frame that is built for an electric frame that is built for the local context. Thank you Gabriel we have a few questions here so I'm just going to crack on we've got one about the the actual air pollution source so the question is how much of the air pollution is actually from the exhaust of the E-Burda that the motorbike and how much is about the resuspension of dust and brake wear and tyre wear I think it's a really that's a very sharp question because you know that there's multiple sources of emissions or determinants that come from the likes I know you've been looking at that yes yes thanks thanks very much that's a very that's a very important question in terms of the actual components from the motorcycle we haven't we haven't yet characterized the different the different the different particles from the from the exhaust resuspended dust and also from other vehicles because you have to notice that these motorcycles are not moving in a vacuum so where they are moving there are also cars besides them you have a roadside a roadside kiosk people are flying and everything but that is one of the the steps we are we are exploring with a couple of partners one is the inverse of Birmingham and also the inverse of Colorado Boulder together with Airco where we shall characterize the the the air the air pollution components and then we'll be able to clearly say x is from motorcycles y is from maybe cooking sources this one is from industries so yeah that's still a work in progress with the partners reminds me of the hope that electric cars for example and other vehicles would have a major reduction on noise pollution another source of pollution from transport but of course it's only partly true because only part of the noise is actually from the engine and quite a lot of this from tires and other components on the on the vehicle and it's a similar little way with the air pollution question we have another question here about um a very relevant and topical one about sourcing of key materials for the electric mobility system so things like nick or cobalt palladium platinum and the question about how the crisis in Ukraine might affect I suppose global supply to some of these important elements necessary for e-transition of one kind or another I think Gabriel it's fair to say that at the moment these key components are not being manufactured in in Uganda or in fact even in eastern Africa they're for example in the main imported from countries like China so I guess the stability of the supply to Uganda itself at this point in time who knows in the future may be more dependent on the on countries like China and their ability to respond and be resilient to you know global supply of the key materials is that I think I'm right in saying there is they're not produced directly in the region Gabriel and no um so the components are being imported from from China they're not being produced in in the region and you know that goes ahead to reemphasize how um how how complex this supply chain is um with the components coming in from you know China then have them being received in Uganda and then we try to do the retrofitting yeah but of course supply chain issues would will definitely have an impact on on the retrofit and acceleration of transition ironically um and I believe Uganda is a an exporter of cobalt as are some countries very similar so just have this image of cobalt traveling from Uganda to China and then coming back in a in a different form um that would be the characteristic of some uh global supply chains um next question is if there was to be a really radical shift in um immobility towards immobility in a country like Uganda clearly that would create a more significant dependence um or demand for power electric power in the country um any ideas from you Gabriel about how the current power generation set up the network would be able to handle a significant increase in demand so currently um Uganda produces more electricity than it needs and it's exporting some to the neighboring countries including Kenya um and it's it's it's it's it's difficult to say how a surge in mobility um will will affect the current uh power power supply uh or the current power uptake uh but it's fair to say that uh of course uh an accelerated increase will lead to um increased demand in power or what I what I know for sure is uh they are that there have been uh hydro hydro power stations that have been launched uh recently by the government and there is also uh there is also an option of solar um Uganda has the sun for almost all year round even during the rainy season so there is an there's an option of of using solar to charge these uh stations uh thank you Gabriel in fact we have Sanam Arcanum from um uh from CISL he's been studying some of that new hydro generation in Uganda so I'm sure we can follow up with her um offline it's a question here about e-waste you mentioned it in your presentation Gabriel about you know if there's a significant investment now in the um in battery powered mobility how that might lead ultimately and other components of an electrified engine how that might lead to any waste challenge what what's the state of play in terms of waste management generally in a city like Kampala and do you think there is scope for responsibly and effectively managing any e-waste impacts which might result from this transition I think um for waste in general um and that is organic waste which uh you know I have quite some evidence about is uh it's it's the management of waste uh has not been up to scratch and for the e-waste to now become to now be looking as a put as a put as a put possibility within uh the three to five years I think this is one of the key areas that uh uh government and other stakeholders need to need to put their focus in in order to avoid any negative unintended consequences and also avoid e-waste being exported to other countries and then you know they take out the components and again we end up buying these batteries at a more expensive cost I think setting I know Uganda's set up an e-waste they have set up an e-waste facility it's relatively new I think one year old I don't know whether it has capacity to to handle the e-waste that will come along within within the five years but I hope that that they will build capacity by then and I think having this e-waste would also give us an opportunity to recycle you know some of the components within this within these batteries I know from speaking with you before that the you know the ultimate aim here is not simply to be remain dependent on imported components and batteries and and and whole motorbikes or whole electric vehicles but to develop that capacity locally in Uganda with all the job creation benefits on that but I I suspect that you know having focusing on that e-waste challenge at a very early stage so that it's we don't inadvertent if you're all the right reasons lead to a major waste problem in the future is is essential so I'm sure you may find opportunities given the the scale of your engagement with the the policy the policy developers in the various ministries you've worked with in Kampala to raise that to preempt those kind of problems from emerging by the way thank you very much for everyone who's been putting questions in I'm reading more here and there's there's quite a few so but please do continue to to ask questions and I will pose them to Gabriel um I've got another one here for you Gabriel this is about the you mentioned this it's the concept of banning by the voters from the center of Kampala and in fact the question suggests that there may have been a similar ban banning of of many bus taxis or Matatus in Nairobi for example which was short-lived this it's an interesting dynamic here on the one hand you want to kind of reduce pollution and and and traffic accidents and safety etc etc but on the other hand you want the city to operate efficiently and the truth is that these motorbikes and Matatus can travel places which a lot of other vehicles would struggle and and actually do get people very efficiently from one part of the city to another so it how would you like to comment on that dynamic you know on the one hand we want a nice clean safe cities on the other hand we want an efficient transport system where it are basically our boat about is the future it's uh it yeah and for me it's been really eye-opening with uh you know um this this this world research of working with different actors um as as Jake mentioned earlier you know um before this my experience was uh assess how health quality affects uh people exposure affects people and then you know dump the results to to the to the policy makers but working with the different actors has made me appreciate that um hey you have to think of um you know uh are these interventions inclusive what are the trade-offs within society because uh we these interventions can't exist in a virtual you know you you could easily say that you know burning but the borders the next day you know you have um 1 4.7 million in the region uh sources you know taken out you know how many people have you taken out of jobs you know how many people have you taken out of the supply chain and there are there are inclusive ways of um you know of trying to get um this uh these interventions across and including the beneficiaries in this because from the discussions we have had even the the border border writers themselves uh know the not know the the the challenges that uh the experience even in the terms of pollution about you know constant coughing and everything and they don't like this you know though they are doing this and they they want help they want to work with people to find solutions to this so for me I think trying to find you know the trade-offs either be it maybe just have organized organized routes organized stages organized time intervals etc having having that kind of holistic approach where you know all cards are put to the table and then you kind of go through one by one and trying to get the best solution available but I think um from the the web border borders um are supporting the economy from the way uh they are embedded in the fabric of mobility you know it's really difficult to just wish them away and and I think they are part of the the mobility ecosystem. Thank you Gabriel I'm I'm from first hand that um they do have a knack of getting to places which other vehicles can't get to and that includes out of the city into the rural areas where you know the roads might be impossible to some larger vehicles they're not impossible to motorcycles and as you illustrated earlier that can mean it becomes feasible to deliver various supplies of course from e-commerce but also health supplies and also extract samples and have them sent to clinics for testing and so forth so there's an amazing opportunity not just in the city areas but but outside now here's a really difficult question for you but I think it's is a it's a fundamental one it's the the so-called elephant in the room I think for e-mobility and that is I'm going to read the question it seems that the transition the the electric mobility transition doesn't solve the congestion issue despite the reduction in air pollution what would be the alternative policy suggestions to to deal with that so clearly just having just replacing petrol motorbikes with electric motorbikes does nothing to help the congestion problem in fact they might be even more popular and it might inadvertently increase congestion so how are you thinking about the congestion issue which is tied up with road safety and all kinds of other factors yeah I think they are the the approach we've discussed with the collaborating partners is how do we not only look at border borders as a mean of of transportation but how are they integrated in the whole transportation model so if if we're planning let's say mass transit we're planning that mass transit which areas what are the roots of the mass transit and how are the border borders integrated within that whole you know transportation matrix and you know you find that for this for like the city centers yes in terms of congestion I think mass transit mass transit and if it's electric would be a very fantastic idea but then these these mass transit systems move from point A to B after that just outside the city centers you have very narrow roads you have different parts where border borders can be integrated so for the for the challenge of congestion it's not now there it's for it's looking at the the whole transportation the whole transportation matrix including borders mini buses and buses and I think if we looked at the border borders and and the mass transit systems they can they can coexist within their mobility ecosystem thank you Gabriel I guess you one could summarize that as integrated transport planning which is of course the policy goal that many governments aspire to but really find very challenging including the UK I do recall actually seeing a because I think in addition to the options you mentioned there's also active travel there's the you know what is life like for pedestrians for cyclists etc to reduce the demand for motorized transport altogether or then virtual presence to reduce any need for movement but I do recall seeing a cyclist battling through Nairobi a few years ago and I was thinking that I was very I was empathizing because that it was not an environment in a very you know in a very congested center of Nairobi for a for a cyclist yet they were trying it was a heroic act to be honest and I think you know maybe that's part of the solution to to improve them active travel yeah I think you give a good description having an integrated transport planning I think that that would that so that solves it and these can coexist both of us can coexist with mass transit with motorized transport let's try and get a couple more questions in there's a there's a there's a there's a really complex question here which I'm just going to have to buy myself a minute to to properly absorb but in the meantime I know you've done work in comparative work because you've looked you've done a review of the literature as I understand it looking at air pollution management and mobility questions in different cities I think mainly across the African continent but possibly drawing on lessons learned in other parts of the world you want to just say something briefly about that while I properly digest this question in front of me and play that back to you in a minute or so yeah yeah so part of part of what I've been working on with with collaborating partners is assessing air quality strategies that have been implemented in sub-saharan Africa focusing on you know who have who have developed the strategy the implementers which ones have worked which ones have not worked and what have been the both positive and negative unintended consequences of these interventions and you know and the overarching aim for this is because if we're trying to tackle air pollution which in most cases for significant parties based on you know you have you measure you have to do continuous measuring to understand you know what you're trying to solve what are the sources etc but we all know that is that that capacity is not yet fully developed in sub-saharan African context so with this work what we hope to do is will have those strategies that have been developed who has been you know who has been involved you know what what strategies have worked and you can be you can just dive in and see what the local context of that area and see if that can be replicated to your to your local context or what factors you need to kind of incorporate and I think it's a it's a very good way of trying to have these strategies replicated in other different areas thank you Gabriel the the the question I was struggling with but I think I've understood now is from a colleague in Dakar Senegal who has is noting that European countries and the US are exporting older vehicles to Senegal and of course those older vehicles are not necessarily at the level of pollution management that one might aspire to and they're they're they're they're they're they're coming into a country which hasn't necessarily got the the policy established to cope with that and the management the air quality management is that I think the question is really about whether we you know whether we in the west let's say Europe and and the US should be doing that at all is it helpful to have that kind of flow of older vehicles into a country like Senegal or Uganda for that matter or should you know should those countries be developing their own far better adapted modes of transport and perhaps technologies which are more suited and more manageable than the ones being imported okay I think yeah as rightly put the question is quite complex so there are many there are many factors to you know to I would consider in trying to answer this this question and also from the from the literature the thing about it and it I think the buck stops with a policy policy is really really key in this I'll give an example that the the wet cars are taxed less in the East African region it would be if a car in the UK is probably 10 000 pounds by the time if I'm to get a kind in the UK for 10 000 pounds by the time it's in Uganda it will be almost 17 000 or 20 000 pounds with the taxation regime of cars and you know you're looking at a low income area but the price has almost doubled so in a sense in a moral sense it's you know you could argue you know it's not good for it's not good to import to export those old cars to you know the to to to Africa the other thing is that what is the policy doing to to kind of clamp on that I know Kenya they they don't allow cars I think older than seven years Uganda as as put a policy you can't employ I mean you can't import cars older than 15 years and I think it's going to 10 so these policies this policies in a long run can keep on trying to carve out on some of these issues thanks Gabriel it is clearly quite probably contested as well but I mean a 15 year old car at present might not you know might simply not meet the pollution mission standards that one would require in Uganda's transitioning economy so there's clearly questions around that and whether we should be doing it look I'd like to thank everyone for joining and Gabriel in particular for presenting but also everyone who's answered questions who has provided questions and also just listened to the story please feel free to follow up Gabriel's email is is in front of you on the screen really great to have your involvement in this I think you know my summary is e-mobility transition it's it has its issues we have to do it responsibly but could create a very very inclusive and environmentally beneficial contribution to not just the transport system but but job creation the climate commitments and getting the evidence and the the science behind the benefits to health to climate to you know to to the economy seems to be a very very important part of making the case and driving that transition accelerating transition as fast as it can possibly go to extract those benefits for both Uganda and also countries which are in a similar position so thanks very much for the presentation Gabriel and thanks everyone for joining and look forward to the next of these in due course thank you Jack for the moderation and thanks everyone who has attended really appreciate