Africa requires $4-billion in annual investment, to provide 250-million with clean cooking energy.
This is according to Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), who says developed nations should scale up their funding to provide clean cooking solutions to 900-million households in Africa.
He warns: “Without solving the problem of clean cooking in Africa, the global plan of decarbonising would not be meaningful.
“We believe this issue should be solved because it is a stain on humanity,” Birol told a high-level event to promote access to clean cooking held on the sidelines of COP28 in Dubai.
He announced plans to make clean cooking a key topic on the IEA’s global conference agenda involving more than 50 governments in February 2024.
Dr Akinwumi Adesina, president of the African Development Bank Group, says the bank will allocate up to 20% of its approved annual lending for energy toward clean cooking solutions.
The bank’s contribution will generate $2-billion for clean cooking over the next 10 years, Adesina said in a call to action to provide universal access to clean cooking for women in Africa.
He urged national governments to allocate at least 5% of the current $70-billion annual energy investment for the provision of clean cooking solutions.
Adesina said accessibility and affordability to clean cooking solutions should be assured in the development of liquefied petroleum gas upstream capacity, especially for production, storage and distribution infrastructure.
Close to 1-billion people in Africa do not have access to clean cooking and rely on biomass or kerosene, which cause high levels of indoor air pollution. As a result, about 600 000 African women and children die annually from the hazards of cooking with wooden biomass or fossil fuels, according to official data.
The global economic cost of women’s time lost in search of fuel wood is estimated at $800-billion annually. The health cost is estimated at $1,4-trillion annually.