Clean cooking – Moving forward

The latest statistics  on access to clean cooking are out, and they are sobering: according to the report, Tracking SDG7 2025, 2.1 billion people, mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa, still rely on polluting fuels to cook. This means that millions of women and girls are still exposed to harmful fumes every single time they prepare a meal.

As a specialist working in the energy field for more than two decades, I have witnessed innovations that didn’t seem possible when I started my career. The cost of solar power generation has decreased by 90% since 2010. In many developing countries, solar mini grids are the cheapest way to bring high-quality 24/7 electricity to towns and cities off the grid. Roof-top off-grid solar systems can provide schools and health clinics with all the electricity they need. And I could go on… 

But still, in Sub-Saharan Africa, the number of people lacking access to clean cooking is growing at a level of 14 million people yearly, unable to catch up with population growth. In 2024, according to the World Health Organization, this resulted in over 810 000 premature deaths.

How is that possible? What are the remaining barriers?

First, affordability. People lacking access to clean cooking solutions are often low-income families and cannot afford the upfront cost of cookstoves and appliances, as well as access to modern fuels (e.g. LPG and electricity). And the absence of demand from viable customers precludes economies of scale and keeps costs up. This is a major barrier to the transition.

Second, private sector companies still find it difficult to make a good business out of selling clean cookstoves in low-income areas. The companies that build and sell clean cookstoves are often led by development-minded CEOs, who still need a viable market and sustainable business model to attract the necessary investments and pay the bills.

And third, the lack of information and the difficulty of changing traditional ways of cooking. Many households in Africa are still unaware of the health risks of inhaling the fumes coming from charcoal, wood or other polluting fuels on traditional cookstoves. In addition, existing cooking practices are deeply rooted in cultural norms and adopting new ways requires significant behavioral change.

There are more issues, and the new report by the International Energy Agency on Clean Cooking in Africa provides a comprehensive overview of these challenges.

The good news is that, once called an “orphan” sector, access to clean cooking is now recognized by the development community, including many governments in Sub-Saharan Africa, as central to economic growth. An example of that is the inclusion of clean cooking in the national energy compacts by most countries participating in the World Bank Group’s Mission 300.

ESMAP’s Clean Cooking Fund has been able to shift from primarily developing knowledge and gathering data to actively supporting World Bank energy operations.  To date, the Clean Cooking Fund has allocated over $86 million in grants to 28 countries. With help from ESMAP, the World Bank has leveraged $102 million from IDA/IBRD, $10.81 million from carbon finance, and $279 million from private financing, helping more than 37 million people and 2,772 public institutions access clean cooking solutions.

In Uganda, for example, the ongoing World Bank project Electricity Access Scale-Up Project (EASP) has benefited from $10 million from ESMAP, alongside a $10 million IDA allocation, specifically for clean cooking.

This project addresses all the challenges highlighted above. It includes:

• Provision of working capital debt finance for clean cooking SMEs and of credit to consumers through microfinance institutions (MFIs).
• Establishment of a results-based financing (RBF) grant facility for SMEs.
• Provision of clean cooking solutions for public and private institutions.

Support and enabling environment for the clean cooking sector, including policy development and improvement, technical assistance to market players, consumer awareness campaigns (such as working with the health practitioners, women groups, and educators on the issue of household air pollution and clean cooking options.)

The project aims to deliver 353,000 clean cooking solutions to targeted households, benefiting over 1.6 million people.

Following the success of our first Clean Cooking Fund, we’ve rolled out as part of our new business plan the Clean Cooking Fund 2.0 to ramp up and broaden our efforts. This new phase will build on our previous work by scaling up the already successful programs, supporting regional platforms, increasing cross-sectorial efforts, creating new tools to facilitate projects designs in reaching underserved communities and connecting the dots between clean-cooking knowledge and real-world needs.

So, moving forward, through strategic partnerships, using innovative financing methods, and focusing on gender equality, we are dedicated to tackling the many challenges of clean cooking.