Across the world, the way people cook their daily meals is both intensely private and profoundly political. Today roughly two billion people still prepare food on open fires or inefficient stoves burning wood, charcoal, dung, coal or kerosene, a reality that produces toxic household air pollution and is linked to millions of premature deaths each year. Globally, household air pollution was estimated to cause about 3.2 million deaths in 2020, including many young children, and remains one of the largest avoidable environmental threats to human health.
Africa bears a disproportionate share of that burden. Recent technical assessments estimate that household air pollution accounts for roughly 815,000 premature deaths a year in Africa alone, and that women and girls, primarily responsible for cooking and fuel collection in most communities lose hours each day to gathering fuel and preparing food, at the expense of education, paid work and wellbeing. These human costs connect directly to development, equity and climate objectives across national and international frameworks.
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A new report by the International Energy Agency (IEA), Universal Access to Clean Cooking in Africa, makes clear that Africa can close one of its most harmful energy and development gaps within just 15 years. By replicating the successes of other developing economies, the continent could achieve universal access to clean cooking by 2040. This would require a dramatic acceleration of progress: 80 million people gaining clean cooking solutions every year, representing a sevenfold increase from today’s pace. The scale of ambition is formidable, but the costs are relatively modest, about $37 billion cumulatively to 2040, or less than 0.1% of annual global energy investment.
The African Development Bank Group has pledged $2 billion over 10 years towards clean cooking solutions in Africa. The pledge represents an important contribution to the $4 billion per year needed to allow African families to have access to clean cooking by 2030.
“Why should anybody have to die just for trying to cook a decent meal that is taken for granted in other parts of the world,” African Development Bank former President Akinwumi Adesina asked during an energy summit in Tanzania. “Africa must develop with dignity, with pride. Its women, its population must have access to clean energy solutions.
The combustion products emitted by polluting fuels, fine particulates, carbon monoxide and other toxic compounds are well established risk factors for respiratory disease, cardiovascular illness, low birthweight and childhood pneumonia. The evidence base is robust: major global health agencies and peer-reviewed studies place household air pollution among the top environmental risks for disease burden in low- and middle-income countries. The result is not only tragic loss of life but also recurrent healthcare costs, lost labour productivity and educational setbacks that perpetuate poverty cycles.
Women are the immediate frontline in this crisis. In many African settings, women and adolescent girls spend multiple hours per day collecting fuel and cooking. The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that these labour demands often amount to about four hours daily, reducing opportunities for school attendance and formal employment, and entrenching gendered divisions of labour that constrain the economic agency of households and communities.
While household cooking is not the largest single source of global greenhouse-gas emissions, it is nevertheless an important near-term climate actor. Burning biomass inefficiently emits carbon dioxide, methane and short-lived climate forcers such as black carbon; these pollutants have immediate local and regional climate effects, and black carbon in particular accelerates glacial melt when transported to high altitudes. Transitioning hundreds of millions of households from polluting fuels to cleaner alternatives therefore yields measurable climate co-benefits as well as public health gains.
Africa’s Chance to Close the Gap in Just 15 Years
A landmark 2024 IEA report, Universal Access to Clean Cooking in Africa provides the most detailed blueprint yet for solving the crisis. The analysis shows that Africa could close one of its most harmful energy and development gaps within 15 years if it replicates progress seen in other developing economies. Today, four in five families across the continent still cook with polluting fuels like wood, charcoal or dung, often over open fires or basic stoves. These practices contribute to more than 800,000 premature deaths annually, mostly among women and children while trapping millions more in poverty through lost health, time and opportunity.
The IEA’s roadmap is anchored in granular, square-kilometre-level mapping of clean cooking infrastructure, costs and accessibility across sub-Saharan Africa. It outlines a country-by-country strategy that draws on best practices from around the world while tailoring them to African realities. Under this plan, 80 million people would gain access to clean cooking solutions every year, representing a sevenfold acceleration from today’s pace. By 2035, urban households could reach near-universal access, while rural coverage would expand steadily through the 2030s.
The scale of investment required, while substantial for African economies, is modest in global terms. Achieving universal access in Africa requires $37 billion in cumulative investment by 2040, roughly $2 billion annually, or less than 0.1% of the world’s yearly energy spending. This figure covers not only household stoves, cylinders and canisters but also the enabling infrastructure of fuel distribution, storage terminals and electricity grid upgrades.
At the household level, the roadmap foresees liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) providing access for over 60% of newly connected households, with the remainder served by a mix of electricity, bioethanol, biogas and advanced biomass cookstoves. This mix reflects consumer preferences and the realities of urban versus rural supply chains.
The Paris Summit And Beyond
The Summit on Clean Cooking in Africa, hosted in May 2024 in Paris by the IEA and its partners, marked a turning point in political and financial momentum. The event mobilised over $2.2 billion in public and private commitments, of which $470 million has already been disbursed. Equally significant, 10 of the 12 African governments represented at the Summit enacted or strengthened clean cooking policies in its aftermath. Today, more than 70% of Africans without access to clean cooking live in countries that have updated or expanded their policy frameworks since 2024, a marked departure from the policy inertia that characterised previous decades.
The dividends of universal access are profound. The IEA’s modelling shows that achieving universal clean cooking access by 2040 could prevent 4.7 million premature deaths across Africa, the majority among women and children. Women and girls could collectively recover two hours each day previously lost to cooking and fuel collection, a time windfall equivalent to the total annual working hours of Brazil’s entire labour force today. Beyond health and equity, the transition would create around 460,000 permanent jobs in Africa’s clean cooking value chain, primarily in distribution, retail and maintenance. This workforce expansion is comparable in scale to the entire electric utility sector on the continent, highlighting the opportunity to align clean energy access with industrial job creation.
Designing clean cooking programmes through a gender lens is not optional: it is essential for impact. Gender-responsive interventions recognise that women are primary users and are often the main decision-makers about household energy, but they also face constraints in access to finance, land, information and markets. Success stories in the sector combine targeted finance (microcredit, pay-as-you-go models and LPG subsidies), women-led distribution networks and training programmes that create income opportunities while respecting cultural cooking preferences. Interventions that reduce time burdens and exposure to smoke can raise women’s participation in education and the labour market, thereby multiplying development returns.
Converging Goals for A Cleaner Future
Clean cooking sits at the convergence of public health, gender equity, climate action and economic development. For Africa, where demographic growth and urbanisation will shape energy needs for decades, the choices governments and financiers make now will either lock populations into cycles of ill-health and poverty or catalyse broad gains in wellbeing and productivity. The evidence is clear: interventions that replace polluting household fuels with clean alternatives save lives, reduce greenhouse gases and immediate climate forcers, and empower women by reclaiming time and health. What remains is political will, prioritised financing and pragmatic, culturally aware implementation at scale.
