Clean Cooking Takes Centre Stage as Africa Pushes to Protect Nearly a Billion Lives

Mission 300, the joint African Development Bank Group and World Bank Group initiative to connect 300 million Africans to electricity by 2030, has helped broaden that discussion about household energy needs.

For nearly one billion Africans without access to clean cooking, preparing a meal can mean breathing polluted air and spending hours gathering fuel instead of studying or earning a living. The African Development Bank Group has called on governments and development partners to treat this daily burden as a central development priority and a shared responsibility, placing clean cooking at the heart of Africa's energy transition.

A Daily Household Burden Reaches the Global Stage

The call came at the High-Level Heads of State Event on Clean Cooking in Africa, held on 22 September during the 81st United Nations General Assembly in New York. Convened by Kenya and Norway with the International Energy Agency, the Clean Cooking Alliance and UN Energy, the gathering marked what organisers described as the first time clean cooking had taken centre stage in the General Assembly's history. Heads of state, ministers, development banks, UN agencies and other partners discussed how to raise political commitment and accelerate universal access across Africa.

Households dependent on wood, charcoal and other traditional biomass fuels face consequences that extend beyond the kitchen, including indoor air pollution, pressure on forests and lost productivity. Women and children carry a disproportionate share of the health risks and fuel-collection duties, leaving less time for education, paid work and enterprise. Kenyan President William Ruto called for clean cooking to be integrated into national planning, with Nairobi set to host the second Summit on Clean Cooking in Africa in January 2027 to turn political commitments into investment and implementation plans.

Energy Plans Put Cooking Alongside Electricity

African Development Bank Group Senior Vice President Marie-Laure Akin-Olugbade, representing President Sidi Ould Tah, said the way families cook directly affects health, forests, productivity, gender equality and human dignity. Her message placed household cooking firmly within the wider development agenda, stressing that it could no longer be treated as a secondary concern in the energy transition.

Mission 300, the joint African Development Bank Group and World Bank Group initiative to connect 300 million Africans to electricity by 2030, has helped broaden that discussion about household energy needs. All 36 National Energy Compacts adopted to date under the initiative include clean cooking ambitions, according to Akin-Olugbade, with countries pursuing options including improved cookstoves, liquefied petroleum gas, electric cooking, biogas, bioethanol and briquettes.

Financing Begins to Reach Homes and Institutions

Following the first Summit on Clean Cooking in Africa in 2024, the Bank Group committed to channel $2 billion into the sector over ten years. It has already directed approximately $135 million to clean cooking projects, representing a tenfold increase compared with its cumulative financing before that summit. The scale of the increase reflects a stronger financial commitment to a household need that affects health, livelihoods and access to opportunity.

Projects supported by the bank include biogas plants and subsidies for efficient electric cooking appliances in Uganda, alongside the integration of electric cooking devices into wider electrification investments in Tanzania. In Rwanda, results-based financing is designed to expand access to clean cooking technologies for 100,000 households and 300 institutions, connecting financial support with the delivery of wider access.

The Bank Group is expanding concessional and catalytic financing through the Rome Process/Mattei Plan Financing Facility and the Africa Clean Cooking Program under the Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa. Ireland announced a €300,000 pledge to support the Clean Cooking Alliance during the event, adding another contribution to the collective effort. Akin-Olugbade said success should be judged by improvements in people's lives, calling for political leadership, sustained financing and action at scale to make clean cooking a central part of Africa's energy transition.