The African Development Bank Group has called for clean cooking to be treated as a development priority and placed at the centre of Africa’s energy transition, as nearly one billion people across the continent continue to lack access to clean cooking solutions.

The call was made during a High-Level Heads of State Event on Clean Cooking in Africa held on September 23 on the sidelines of the 81st United Nations General Assembly in New York.

Convened by Kenya and Norway with the International Energy Agency, Clean Cooking Alliance and UN Energy, the event brought together African leaders, ministers, development banks, UN agencies and other partners.

Participants highlighted the health, environmental and economic costs of continued reliance on wood, charcoal and other traditional biomass fuels.

Women and children are particularly affected, facing greater exposure to household air pollution and spending significant time collecting fuel, limiting opportunities for education, employment and enterprise.

Kenyan President William Ruto called for clean cooking to be incorporated into national planning.

Kenya is due to host the second Summit on Clean Cooking in Africa in Nairobi in January 2027, where leaders are expected to discuss investment commitments and implementation plans.

African Development Bank Group Senior Vice President Marie-Laure Akin-Olugbade, representing President Sidi Ould Tah, said clean cooking could no longer be treated as a secondary issue in the energy transition.

“How a family cooks affects health, forests, productivity, gender equality, and the daily lives of millions of women and children in Africa,” she said. “It is therefore not a marginal issue; it is central to development, climate action and human dignity.”

Akin-Olugbade said Mission 300, a joint initiative of the African Development Bank Group and World Bank Group to connect 300 million Africans to electricity by 2030, had helped raise the profile of household energy access. All 36 National Energy Compacts adopted by African countries under the initiative include clean cooking ambitions, covering solutions such as improved cookstoves, liquefied petroleum gas, electric cooking, biogas, bioethanol and briquettes.

Following the first Summit on Clean Cooking in Africa in 2024, the African Development Bank committed $2 billion over 10 years to the sector.

It has since channelled about $135 million into clean cooking projects, representing a tenfold increase from cumulative financing before the 2024 summit.

Projects supported by the bank include biogas plants and subsidies for efficient electric cooking appliances in Uganda, electric cooking technologies linked to electrification investments in Tanzania, and results-based financing in Rwanda targeting 100,000 households and 300 institutions.

The bank is also 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-euro contribution to support the Clean Cooking Alliance.

“Success will not be measured by the dollars we invest, but by the lives we improve,” Akin-Olugbade said. “Clean cooking must become a central pillar of Africa’s energy transition — one that demands political leadership, sustained financing and collective action at scale.” -OGN/TradeArabia News Service