Thermal comfort in sub-Saharan Africa: Field study report in Jos-Nigeria

There is much documented material concerning human thermal comfort from the physiological, adaptive and social convention paradigms. Most of these studies have been conducted on limited-occupancy buildings, such as offices and institutions of higher learning in the northern hemisphere and parts of the ASEAN region; the subjects generally being adults and assumed to be in good health. In contrast, limited work appears to have been carried out in regularly occupied buildings like homes and in tropical sub-Saharan Africa. This study seeks to fill this gap by providing empirical thermal comfort data from a city in the tropical savannah region of Africa. The data collected include temperature, humidity, CO2 level and lighting level, as well as results from questionnaires on the occupants’ sensations of thermal comfort. The results show the range of conditions in which occupants in naturally ventilated buildings are comfortable. The preferred conditions suggested by the data are an operative temperature of just over 26 °C.