Africa ‘on track’ for universal clean cooking by 2040

The latest IEA report hails the relative ease with which universal clean cooking can be achieved at low cost through simple policies, write Matt Scotland and Waldemar Jaszczyk

The IEA says the goal of achieving universal clean cooking access in Africa by 2040, mainly through LPG, is firmly on track in its first update since last year's summit on the issue — in which $2.2bn in public and private funding was pledged until 2030.

The governments and private-sector firms behind the pledges have disbursed $470mn, or a fifth, of the $2.2bn to date in 16 African countries, according to the IEA — putting them on course to hit the 2030 deadline. Most of this has come from the private sector, at 82pc, while 18pc has come from public funds — put down to higher private commitments and the expectation that public pledges, much of which was concessional financing, will come towards the end of the timeframe. The $470mn has been spent on infrastructure projects, including two new LPG import terminals in Tanzania — one from trading firm Petredec and the other from African distributor Oryx — as well as storage and bottling facilities in Malawi, Namibia and Nigeria.

African countries have enacted 42 new clean cooking policies since the May 2024 summit, with significant achievements made in Kenya, Nigeria and the Ivory Coast, IEA director Fatih Birol said on 18 July at an event to launch its progress and roadmap report, Universal Access to Clean Cooking in Africa. The lack of access to clean cooking in Africa remains "one of the greatest injustices in the world" yet a problem that is "very easy to solve", Birol said. No new technologies or "trillions of dollars of investment" are needed, just "simple policies and low costs", he said. And the main solution will be LPG — contributing 61pc of the transition to 2040, with electricity, bioethanol and biogas among the alternatives making up the balance.

The IEA is confident that LPG penetration across sub-Saharan Africa is achievable under its report's ACCESS scenario, in which $2bn/yr is invested and 80mn people/yr gain access to clean cooking over 2025-40. LPG demand in the region will grow to just under 1mn b/d (31.5mn t/yr) from around 175,000 b/d today. Such an expansion, and the roadmap's requirement for at least 30 days' of inventories, would require significant investment in regional storage and distribution infrastructure. This is feasible, the IEA stresses, given that $675mn was spent on clean cooking infrastructure, mainly LPG, in 2023 — a 10pc rise on the year — which then rose again by an undisclosed level in 2024 and is due to rise again this year.

Inefficient and insufficient

But many substantial challenges remain, and in spite of the progress made over the past year, much more is needed to breach the gap to the targets set. "We have seen a 20pc increase in clean cooking access and a 20pc increase in investment, but this has been inefficient and insufficient to overcome the challenge," the African Union's commissioner for infrastructure and energy, Lerato Mataboge, says. Governments in the region urgently need to adopt more progressive policies, shift manufacturing and supply chains to the continent, mobilise all forms of financing and build a basket of fuels to achieve the end goal, she says.

Affordability remains a core challenge, with two-thirds of sub-Saharan Africans required to spend more than 10pc of their income for access to clean cooking, the IEA report finds. Targeted subsidies, pay-as-you-go technologies and concession finance — with debt financing expected to grow from 35pc to 50pc — are essential, it finds. The IEA also recognises that although some countries are making considerable progress, others lag significantly in terms of investment and policy support. Overcoming the idiosyncratic hurdles in each country as well as more general regional ones will be a major test for achieving universal access.

This objective will nevertheless be helped by growing international recognition of its importance. The Clean Cooking Declaration — a pledge from the summit to make 2024 the pivotal year in tackling the issue — has been endorsed by 100 countries and organisations, and has pushed the issue up the international agenda, including at G7, G20 and the African Energy Summit. And the issue is expected to be brought into even sharper focus at the UN's Cop 30 climate summit in Belem, Brazil, in November.

"This year, Tanzania is firmly planting clean cooking on the agenda at the UNFCCC [UN Framework Convention on Climate Change] negotiations leading up to Cop 30 in Belem," Tanzania's representative for clean cooking, Jacqueline Kawishe, says. This aligns with many of the core priorities for Brazil, such as forest preservation, she says. Brazil is implementing its own subsidy scheme similar to India's PMUY programme that will target low-income rural areas to transition them to use LPG for cooking.

The IEA's announcement came as the World Liquid Gas Association (WLGA) — which formed the Cooking For Life Africa Task Force at last year's summit and which has been working closely with the IEA on the issue — called on African governments to accelerate the roll-out of clean cooking schemes at the Central Africa LPG Expo in Cameroon on 18 July. This was followed by Opec secretary-general Haitham al-Ghais on 21 July saying that LPG was crucial in providing universal access. "The organisation advocates for policies and programmes to promote, finance and implement projects that expand the utilisation of LPG across regions and countries," he said.

Banned aid

But securing funding could face headwinds from swingeing aid cuts from major western donors. US president Donald Trump announced a pause to all US foreign aid through the country's international development agency USAID in January. The country had previously committed $40mn in clean cooking funding during the IEA summit, all of which had already been fulfilled, according to IEA tracking.

UK prime minister Keir Starmer early this year decided to fund a rise in defence spending entirely through cuts to the country's aid budget from 2027. This came only three months after the UK's minster of development Anneliese Dodds had pledged £74mn ($93mn) to "support 10mn people across sub-Saharan Africa, south Asia and the Indo-Pacific" in clean cooking initiatives at Cop 29.

France, which made the largest pledge by a country at the IEA summit, has slashed its spending for "official development assistance" by 35pc since the summit. Paris committed to investing more than €100mn ($115mn) over five years in Africa, just over 5pc of which had already been implemented, and promised to mobilise even more through its "4P" pact on international financing for climate and energy transitions in vulnerable countries.

A renewed focus on defence spending in Europe and rising budget deficits may limit available funds in future years, putting more pressure on the private sector to finance the transition.

Clean cooking affordability in SSA by 2040*

LPG affordability in SSA in 2023*