Paper short abstract:

In Ghana, low cost sensors are an opportunity to extend air quality monitoring networks, yet questions remain regarding their integration into official networks. This paper explores reconfiguration ongoing in regulatory science where academics and experts are trying to legitimize their legal value.

Paper long abstract:

Air quality monitoring is based on the proliferation of heavy, expensive and fixed monitoring regulatory stations, which have become one of the pillars of regulatory science. In the Global South where resources are scarce, low-cost sensors (LCS) allow for to the extension of air quality monitoring networks at reduced costs. Therefore a wide range of actors, such as academics, citizen and experts, is seizing the opportunity to measure air pollution and act on the data. However, this technology remains controversial and raises questions about the conditions under which an uncertified device can integrate official networks. In Ghana, academics and Ghana-EPA experts are collaborating to make LCS work properly in the local settings through calibration and validation work. LCS are integral to major reconfigurations in the Global South, which raise the possibility to recognise LCS data as regulatory measurements in the same way as those taken by reference-grade monitors, which can be used for legal purposes. This proposition aims to analyse the role of local stakeholders in transforming regulatory science in Ghana by using LCS and compete with highly technical and expensive instruments from Global North. Through the analysis of the assemblages between academics, experts, donors and startups, this paper explore how Ghanaian scientists and experts produce scientific knowledge and expertise which are contesting regulatory science from Global North and inequities in knowledge production by appropriating and creating new ways of making air science. This contribution is based on observations and interviews conducted in Accra between August 2021 and April 2023.