ABA Editorial · Mar 31, 2026 · 14 min read
Approximately 900 million Africans lack access to clean cooking fuels, relying on wood, charcoal, kerosene, or other traditional fuels with severe health, environmental, and social consequences. Clean cooking is one of Mission 300's explicit priority areas. This report maps the scale of the problem, the operators working on the transition, and the structural conditions that have made clean cooking one of the slowest-moving components of African energy access.
Clean cooking is the least visible component of the African energy access challenge and arguably the most impactful for household health and environmental sustainability. Approximately 900 million Africans lack access to clean cooking fuels, relying on wood, charcoal, kerosene, crop residues, or animal dung for their daily cooking needs. The consequences of this dependence are severe and well documented. Indoor air pollution from traditional cookstoves is estimated by the World Health Organization to cause hundreds of thousands of premature deaths annually across Sub-Saharan Africa, primarily affecting women and children who spend the most time near cooking fires. Charcoal and firewood demand drives deforestation across much of the continent, undermining climate and biodiversity objectives simultaneously. The labor of collecting firewood falls disproportionately on women and girls, consuming hours each day that could otherwise go to education, paid work, or rest. And yet clean cooking has been one of the slowest-moving components of African energy access, lagging grid electrification and even off-grid solar deployment in both investment volume and observable progress. This report maps the clean cooking landscape and the forces that will shape it over the coming years.
The 900 million Africans without clean cooking access is a figure that has persisted with only gradual decline over the last decade, even as electricity access has improved. Cooking is more difficult to transition than lighting or electrical appliances because traditional fuel (wood and charcoal) is free or cheap at the point of use even when its full social cost (deforestation, health impact, climate emissions) is significant. A household that currently collects firewood from nearby land does not pay a monetary price for that fuel, which means that any alternative (LPG, electric cooking, improved biomass stoves) must compete with a zero-marginal-cost incumbent.
The transition to clean cooking therefore requires either finding ways to make clean alternatives affordable at prices households can pay, or subsidizing clean alternatives to overcome the zero-cost disadvantage of traditional fuels. Neither approach scales easily in African conditions, which is why progress has been slower than advocates hoped.
Four main alternatives to traditional biomass exist for African households. LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) is the most widely adopted alternative where infrastructure supports it. LPG cookstoves produce clean combustion with minimal indoor air pollution, are convenient to use, and have established supply chains in many African countries. The barrier is affordability. LPG requires a cylinder deposit and ongoing cylinder refills, which represent recurring cash expenses that many African households cannot easily absorb. Distribution infrastructure also varies significantly by region, with urban and peri-urban areas typically well served while rural areas often lack reliable LPG availability.
Electric cooking is increasingly viable in regions with reliable electricity access. Induction cooktops, electric pressure cookers, and similar appliances can provide clean, efficient cooking with zero indoor emissions. The barrier is grid reliability and appliance cost. A household that experiences frequent power cuts cannot rely on electric cooking as a primary method, and the upfront cost of appliances is a significant investment for low-income families.
Improved biomass cookstoves represent a middle path: stoves designed to burn wood or charcoal more efficiently, reducing both fuel consumption and indoor air pollution compared to traditional three-stone fires or simple charcoal stoves. Improved stoves do not eliminate biomass combustion but reduce its impact substantially, and they work with fuels that households already have access to. The category has had mixed results, with some programs producing measurable adoption and health benefits and others failing to achieve sustained use after initial distribution.
Biogas and bioethanol are smaller categories that work in specific contexts. Biogas digesters convert organic waste (livestock manure, agricultural residues) into cooking gas at household or community scale. Bioethanol cookstoves use ethanol fuel derived from various feedstocks. Both categories have niches but have not achieved the scale of LPG or even improved biomass programs.
Several African operators have built clean cooking businesses at meaningful scale. BURN Manufacturing, headquartered in Kenya, produces improved biomass and electric cookstoves at a factory in Ruiru, Kenya, and distributes across multiple African countries. BURN has combined stove sales with carbon credit revenue, using the emissions reductions generated by stove adoption to subsidize sales prices for end customers. Envirofit International similarly operates across multiple African markets with improved biomass stove models.
LPG distribution operators, including Oryx Energies, Vivo Energy (through its Shell LPG operations in several African countries), and various national operators, have expanded cylinder distribution networks into peri-urban and some rural areas. The LPG expansion has been faster in North African countries (Morocco, Egypt) where LPG consumption has long been supported by government subsidies and distribution infrastructure is mature. Sub-Saharan LPG expansion has been slower and more uneven.
Electric cooking operators are newer but growing. M-KOPA, M-Gas, and several others have begun experimenting with pay-as-you-go electric pressure cookers and induction cooktops, leveraging mobile money payment infrastructure and existing customer relationships built through solar home system businesses. The commercial model is unproven at scale but the logic is compelling, particularly in markets with sufficient grid electricity or off-grid solar capacity to support the appliance loads.
Mission 300 explicitly includes clean cooking as one of its priority outcomes alongside electrification. The Dar es Salaam Declaration signed by African heads of state in January 2025 included commitments to increase clean cooking access, and several National Energy Compacts submitted under Mission 300 include specific clean cooking targets. The institutional recognition of clean cooking as part of the energy access agenda is an improvement on earlier periods when cooking was often treated as a separate issue from electricity.
The financing question remains significant. Clean cooking transition requires both capital for stove and fuel infrastructure and ongoing support to help low-income households afford cleaner alternatives. Multilateral and bilateral donors have committed funding, but the total financial commitment remains far below what the 900 million access gap would require for rapid closure.
Three indicators will shape clean cooking in Africa. First, whether LPG distribution expansion continues in Sub-Saharan countries with the infrastructure investments needed to reach rural populations at acceptable costs. Second, whether electric cooking trials conducted by operators like M-KOPA demonstrate viability at commercial scale, opening a new pathway that leverages improving grid access and solar home system infrastructure. Third, whether Mission 300 implementation produces clean cooking outcomes proportional to its electrification outcomes, or whether cooking continues to lag electrical access in both investment and deployment. Clean cooking is the quietest crisis in African energy, affecting nearly a billion people every day, and the progress over the next year will determine whether the crisis narrows or continues at its current pace.