More than 900 million people in Africa depend on cooking solutions that cause numerous public health and pollution problems. The summit held in Paris raised funds to replace cookstoves in developing countries, but also raised a few questions…
Could one of the solutions to global warming lie in African kitchens? This is the conviction of the International Energy Agency (IEA), which brought together heads of state, ministers, international organizations, companies and investors in Paris on May 14 for the Clean Cooking in Africa summit, co-chaired by the President of the United Republic of Tanzania, Samia Suluhu Hassan, the Norwegian Prime Minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, and the President of the African Development Bank Group, Dr Akinwumi A. Adesina.
On the agenda of the largest gathering ever organized around the common goal of advancing access to clean cooking in Africa: the search for sources of financing to replace cookstoves in developing countries.
Half a million premature deaths every year
According to the IEA, by 2022, some 2.3 billion people worldwide will not have access to clean cooking facilities. Nearly four out of five people in Africa, or 900 million people, rely on unhygienic cooking solutions that are often dangerous to use, such as kerosene, charcoal, or animal dung. The absence of clean cooking methods has serious health consequences, leading to respiratory, vascular, and cancer problems. Women and children are the most affected, with almost half a million premature deaths every year in Africa alone.
These types of cooking are also disastrous for the climate. They are one of the main sources of carbon emissions and are estimated to kill around four million people worldwide every year through the inhalation of harmful fumes and smoke. The charcoal trade, for example, which accelerates deforestation, was recently the subject of a decree in Uganda banning the cutting of trees for commercial purposes.
“Clean” cooking methods can reduce fuel consumption by 30–60%, leading to fewer deaths from smoke-related illnesses and lower greenhouse gas and carbon emissions, according to the Clean Cooking Alliance. “The international community cannot achieve its goal of combating climate change without tackling the way people cook,” says the non-profit organization.
“If your neighbor’s house is burning, you must help. Africa is our neighbor,” Fatih Birol, Executive Director of the IEA, told Euronews ahead of the event. “The solutions are well known, and we affirm that our primary objective is to ensure affordable and rapid access to cleaner, modern cooking solutions — which include biomass in high-efficiency stoves, biogas, bioethanol, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), electricity — all of which can bring benefits in terms of health, productivity, gender equality, forest preservation, biodiversity, and emissions reduction,” he clarified during the summit.
A system of “carbon credits”
The cost of solving this problem is “relatively low,” according to the IEA, which estimates that 4 billion dollars of investment is needed each year to enable all Africans to have access to clean cooking fuels by 2030. To achieve this, the IEA wants to rely on a “carbon credits” system — units equivalent to one tonne of CO2 captured in the atmosphere, sold to companies in exchange for financing a virtuous carbon capture project.
The strategy is bearing fruit, as oil company TotalEnergies, accustomed to topping the rankings of the biggest polluters, announced at the summit an investment of over 400 million dollars to develop liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) for cooking.
Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre declared that “Norway is a strong supporter of clean cooking,” pledging to invest 50 million euros in “this important cause.”
“France will invest 100 million euros over five years in clean cooking and will mobilize even more through the Paris Pact for People and Planet,” announced French President Emmanuel Macron at the summit.
In all, financing and investments worth 2.2 billion euros will be made in the next five years.
These new announcements add to the commitment made by the African Development Bank Group at COP28 to devote 2 billion dollars to clean cooking over a 10-year period, and will reinforce the direct development aid already available through other governmental and multilateral sources. Speaking at the summit in Paris, Group President Dr. Akinwumi Adesina said the institution would now devote 20% of all its energy project financing to promoting safe cooking alternatives.
“Attention must now turn to the implementation of commitments and results — a task that the summit co-chairs pledge to support,” the agency concluded.
Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan called for a reorganization of the African Development Fund of the African Development Bank (AfDB) to include 12 billion dollars to achieve clean cooking for all low-income countries by 2030. “Insufficient funding and a lack of awareness of the economic opportunities offered by the clean cooking and cooking modes sector are hampering efforts to scale up interventions. In addition, the development of necessary solutions is limited by insufficient research and innovation,” she added.
Only 38% of participants from Africa
Some civil society groups were up in arms against the choice of Paris as the venue. “We don’t understand why a summit of such importance for Africa should be held outside the continent. The decision to host the summit in France does not inspire confidence or give a positive impression. Rather, it suggests that Africans are not in control of the agenda on an issue that is extremely important to them. This, in turn, weakens a well-intentioned summit. France is engaged in oil and gas exploration and expansion projects across Africa, contributing to the energy poverty and climate crisis currently facing the continent,” reads a statement from Power Shift Africa, a think tank providing analysis on climate change, renewable energy, and sustainable development in Africa.
Mohammed Adow, director of the group, expressed particular surprise that the resolutions adopted at the summit had been drawn up by a group of “rich men from the North.” “What we need is a women-centered approach that puts women’s needs first, not those of a profit-hungry private sector. It’s becoming increasingly clear that most women who can afford and have access to gas for cooking could also afford and have access to electric cooking, which can be powered by renewable energy. That’s what we need to focus on,” he added.
Joab Okanda, senior advisor to Christian Aid, a UK charity fighting global poverty, said it was no coincidence that the summit was being held in France. “We have to ask ourselves what the agenda of this summit is. Was it really a summit for Africa or a summit to continue extracting from Africa?” he asked on social network X.
Only 38% of summit participants were from Africa, including 14 African women, out of a list of 84 participants.
