Paper short abstract:

By exploring Global North-Africa research collaborations in Ghana around air pollution, this paper highlights how Ghanaian scientists, by using low cost sensors which they have to adapt through calibration work, participate toward shifting Africa’s position in the global science.

Paper long abstract:

In research on air pollution, the international scientific community and academic journals see highly technical and expensive measurements instruments – not affordable to most scientists in the Global South – as the “gold standard”. Not only does this practically create a Global North monopoly over publication but also wrongly positions research made by these means as “novel”. It is as if the new research brings an unknown problem to light, even though studies of air pollution in countries like Ghana or Kenya goes back several decades, and includes a lot of labour by locally-based researchers (deSouza, 2019). By exploring “Global North-Africa” research collaborations on going in Ghana around air pollution for more than a decade, this paper aims to highlight how Ghanaian scientists are instrumental in knowledge production around air quality. By using low cost sensors, which they have to adapt to the local settings through calibration work, Ghanaian scientists and academics participate toward shifting Africa’s position in the global science. By using the devices, they make them work properly in the local setting and compete with highly technical and expensive measurements instruments from Global North. Through the analysis of the assemblages to produce scientific knowledge between North-South academics, experts, international donors and private actors, this paper explore how Ghanaian scientists are contesting inequities in knowledge production by appropriating and creating new ways of making air science, make it visible to international scientific community and transform the research ecosystem.