Almost half of a billion people in Nigeria, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, and Uganda have no clean cooking access.
This was contained in the July 2023 Vision for Clean Cooking Access for All report that was written in collaboration with the African Development Bank (AfDB) Group.
The report disclosed that in sub-Saharan Africa, 29 countries have access rates below 20%, with half of the almost 500 million people without clean cooking access concentrated in the highlighted countries.
It also said that Africa will end the decade with the same number of people without clean cooking access as of today.
According to it, under current policy and investment environments, many African countries are not expected to reach full clean cooking access even into the 2050s.
It also revealed that currently 2.3 billion people rely on charcoal, firewood, coal, agricultural waste and animal dung as fuel to prepare meals.
It noted that this has caused them to breathe in harmful smoke in the process. It added that the air pollution from these rudimentary cooking methods causes 3.7 million premature deaths per year, ranking it the third largest cause of premature death globally.
The report also said that women suffer the worst impacts from the lack of clean cooking and that the number of people without access to clean cooking in Africa in 2030 remains roughly around the current level of 980 million.
It further said that $8 billion in annual investments in clean cooking stoves, equipment, and infrastructure by 2030 are required.
According to it, this represents a substantial increase in the $2.5 billion currently invested each year. It further stated that sub-Saharan Africa accounts for about half of the total investment requirement this decade.
It said, “Despite access rates climbing from 8% to above 15% from 2010 to 2022, the number of people without clean cooking solutions in sub-Saharan Africa increased by 220 million. Over this period, sub-Saharan Africa provided clean cooking access to about 0.5% of its population each year.
“Some notable success stories can be found in Africa, including South Africa, and recently Nigeria and Kenya, who both implemented new clean cooking (Liquefied Petroleum Gas) strategies in 2015-2021 and since 2010 have brought clean cooking to around 1% of their population each year accelerating to 1.5% since 2015.”