The archive · Public & Social · Marketing decision · 2023
The Extra Step Initiative's soot calculator gave Nigerians a true life expectancy
X3M Ideas re-issued Nigerian life expectancy using soot data, letting Rivers State residents see pollution shorten their lives.
The Extra Step Initiative
What it had to solve
Since 2016, oil bunkering, gas flaring and illegal artisanal refineries have blanketed Nigeria's oil-producing Rivers State with the worst soot ever recorded in the country — on some days 40 times worse than the WHO's 24-hour guideline. The official national life expectancy of 52 years ignored it, and the national conversation had moved on, so the non-profit Extra Step Initiative needed to force the crisis back onto the agenda with a realistic chance of policy action.
How it works
For the people of Rivers State, Nigeria's second-largest oil-producing region, the soot crisis began around 2016: oil bunkering, gas flaring, pipeline explosions and illegal artisanal refineries combined into the largest soot emissions ever recorded in the country, at times 40 times worse than the WHO's 24-hour exposure guideline. Yet the official national life expectancy of 52 years took none of it into account, and as national attention drifted to other problems, residents were effectively left in the dark.
The Extra Step Initiative, a non-governmental organisation based in Port Harcourt, worked with agency X3M Ideas to make the hidden damage visible. Together they built a formula from German Environmental Protection Agency soot data spanning 41 countries, Rivers State's average air quality and Nigeria's official life expectancy — and used it to calculate and issue a new, more realistic life expectancy based on time spent living in Rivers State.
The formula lived on a website, sootcity.com, where visitors could learn their own soot-adjusted life expectancy in real time. The results were published on LED billboards around the country as they came in, and the site automatically generated and sent a letter to every Nigerian senator on each visitor's behalf, urging an end to the soot problem.
Making the crisis personal revived the national conversation the campaign was designed to restart. The work won a Bronze Lion at Cannes Lions 2023 in the Health & Wellness: Non-profit / Foundation-led education & awareness category — Nigeria's and West Africa's first Cannes Lion — and remains in D&AD's awards archive.
Why it lands
- It converts a regional environmental story into a personal, real-time number — a re-issued life expectancy that no reader can dismiss as someone else's problem.
- The formula is built from transparent inputs — German EPA data across 41 countries, local air quality, official life expectancy — so the claim can be checked rather than merely believed.
- Every calculation is wired to action: the website writes and sends a letter to every Nigerian senator, turning personal anxiety into policy pressure.
- Publishing results live on national billboards moves the crisis from Port Harcourt onto the streets of the whole country.
- The first Cannes Lion for Nigeria and West Africa proved that advocacy grounded in data and technology could compete with the world's best commercial work.
What it did
The campaign turned an abstract pollution crisis into a personal number, and the work became Nigeria's — and West Africa's — first Cannes Lion: a Bronze in Health & Wellness at Cannes Lions 2023. D&AD's awards archive carries the campaign.
What you can take
When a crisis stops being news, re-issue the official statistic with the damage priced in — a personal number moves a stalled national debate where warnings no longer can.
Since then
The Extra Step Initiative and X3M Ideas launched the Soot Life Expectancy campaign in Nigeria in February 2023, unveiling the sootcity.com calculator that re-issued life expectancy based on time spent in Rivers State. In June 2023 the campaign won a Bronze Lion at Cannes Lions 2023 in the Health & Wellness: Health: Non-profit / Foundation-led education & awareness category — the first Cannes Lion for Nigeria and West Africa. X3M Ideas' CEO Steve Babaeko said the jury responded to the campaign's marriage of advocacy and technology. The work remains in D&AD's awards archive.
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