Beyond the kitchen: How Rwanda's clean cooking project became a job creation engine

Picture this: a traditional Rwandan kitchen where smoke is so thick you can barely see across the room. A woman, maybe in her twenties, is cooking while her small child plays at her feet, both of them breathing in that smoke from the firewood, day after day.

Six years ago, when the World Bank in collaboration with the Government of Rwanda started designing clean cooking interventions under Rwanda's Energy Access and Quality Improvement Project (EAQIP) with co-financing from the Clean Cooking Fund (CCF), that image stayed with me. It represented the reality for thousands of families across the country.

Back then, over 80% of households were burning firewood and charcoal to cook their meals. It was more than just an environmental problem, though Rwandan forests were definitely suffering. It was a trap that kept families, especially women, stuck in cycles of hard labor and poor health.

A reality check was how much time women were losing to fuel collection. Felicite Uwimana, a mother of three from Kamonyi District put it bluntly: "Before, my job was to fetch firewood. That was it." Think about that for a second. Your entire day revolving around finding fuel to cook dinner.

The clean cooking companies that did exist were struggling too. They had decent products, but who could afford them? Banks wouldn't lend to these small businesses because, honestly, nobody knew if rural families would buy improved stoves. It was a classic chicken-and-egg problem.

Rwanda was identified as the first CCF co-financed country because of the government’s leadership and commitment on the clean cooking agenda. The Government of Rwanda developed its first Biomass Energy Strategy (BEST) in 2009 and updated it in 2019 as the Biomass Energy Strategy 2019–2030, which is now under review. The strategy seeks to ensure the sustainable production and use of biomass energy while reducing reliance on traditional fuels such as firewood and charcoal. It aims to transition all households and institutions to clean cooking solutions by 2030 through technologies such as LPG, biogas, electricity, pellets, and improved cookstoves. Specifically, it targets a reduction in inefficient cooking practices from 79.9% in 2017 to 0% by 2030, while balancing wood supply and demand through sustainable forest management and afforestation. The strategy also emphasizes modernizing the biomass value chain, improving public health, and supporting Rwanda’s climate and energy access goals. Its implementation is designed to be financed through government and development partner support, complemented by private sector investment and financial mechanisms such as microfinance, subsidies, and pay-as-you-cook models to ensure affordability and sustainability.

So, under EAQIP, we together with the Ministry of Infrastructure and the implementing agencies — the Rwanda Development Bank (BRD) and the Energy Development Corporation Ltd (EDCL) — tried something different. Instead of simply injecting money into the sector, they introduced a Results-Based Financing (RBF) scheme. Basically: we'll pay you, but only after you actually sell and install these clean cooking solutions (the first tranche of subsidies) and the customers continue using the products after a year with adequate customer service (the second tranche of subsidies). No results, no subsidy.

In 2022, we mobilized carbon finance from the Carbon Initiative for Development (Ci-Dev) to further expand the results payment to include carbon credits generated from clean cooking deployment.

The numbers tell one story: 20 companies have ended up distributing stoves and liquid petroleum gas (LPG) systems to over 460,000 households since the RBF program was operational in 2021– that's 14% of families in Rwanda.  Their combined sales jumped from Rwf 5.9 billion in 2020 to Rwf 24.7 billion in 2024, more than four times increase.

But the real story is what happened to people's lives.

Enterprise Multiservices Limited started with 22 employees. Now they have 78. That's not just growth, that's 56 families with steady incomes who didn't have them before.

Phaissi Niyonsingiza who's now one of their sales agents, sold over 3,000 cookstoves this year alone, and she talks about her work with pride. "EAQIP clean cooking has changed how we cook, how we live – and for me, how I earn a living."

Across all the companies that received support, the scheme has created or sustained 757 jobs since 2021. That includes 181 jobs for women, up from just 50 before we started. These aren't just any jobs either. People are getting trained in product design, marketing, customer service, safety protocols. Skills they can take anywhere.

A clean cooking entrepreneur showcases improved cookstoves. Through training and results-based financing, local companies are scaling up production and distribution across Rwanda. Photo: World Bank

Look, I could talk about how this aligns with Sustainable Development Goals 7, 5, and 8, or how it fits Rwanda's National Strategy for Transformation. And, it does.

But what really matters is that the project has proven something important: clean energy isn't just about the environment. It's about creating opportunities. When you solve one problem (household air pollution from cooking), you can unlock solutions to others (women's economic empowerment, job creation, business development).

The beauty of the results-based approach is that it's built to last. Companies only get paid when they deliver real value to customers. No handouts, no false promises. Just results.

Picturing back to that smoky kitchen, I wonder if that mother has one of our improved stoves now. I hope her child, who would be school-age by now, isn't spending her afternoons collecting firewood.

This work has taught us that energy policy isn't really about kilowatts and BTUs. It's about what happens when you give people back their time, their health, and their economic agency.

Felicite Uwimana's job used to be fetching firewood. Now women like Phaissi Niyonsingiza are building careers selling the solutions that free other women from that same trap.

That’s the kind of transformation that has made the last six years of working on Rwanda’s energy program truly worthwhile. 

None of this would have been possible without the leadership of the Ministry of Infrastructure and dedication of our implementing partners, BRD and EDCL.