By Kizito Makoye, PARIS France
In a ground-breaking move,
global leaders on Tuesday made an unprecedented financial pledge to tackle the
dirty cooking fuels crisis, which silently claims millions of lives across
Africa.
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| Tanzania’s President Samia Suluhu Hassan and Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre (centre) co-chaired the summit. |
The Summit on Clean Cooking in Africa, chaired jointly by the
leaders of Tanzania and Norway, alongside the African Development Bank, secured
financial commitments from governments, development institutions and
companies.
The summit was co-hosted
by the Clean Cooking Alliance(CCA) and the International Energy
Agency(IEI).
This is the first time such a
substantial amount has been dedicated to clean cooking energy at a single
gathering, and on a continent where four in five people still cook on open
fires, 2024 may mark a turning point for African women in particular, who shoulder
most of this burden.
Lack of access to clean
cooking affects over two billion people globally, with over half of them living
in Africa, often reliant on open fires and rudimentary stoves, fuelled by
charcoal, wood, agricultural wastes and animal dung.
In Africa, more than 850 million people still depend on wood and
charcoal for cooking, the leading cause of indoor pollution, with devastating
effects on the health of women and children particularly, and causes nearly
half of pneumonia deaths among children under five years of
age.
Toxic smoke is the second biggest cause of premature death in Africa,
predominantly affecting women and children.
Impact on women
“Successfully advancing the
clean cooking agenda would contribute toward protecting the environment,
climate, health, and ensuring gender equality,” Tanzanian President Samia
Suluhu Hassan told the summit in Paris.
Hassan has called for the
generous replenishment of the African Development Fund, which includes
$12 billion for clean cooking with the goal of ensuring clean cooking for all
by 2030.
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| In Africa, more than 850 million people still depend on wood and charcoal for cooking |
“Insufficient funding and a
lack of awareness about the economic opportunities within the clean cooking
industry hamper efforts to scale interventions,” she said.
Hassan cited three major
challenges facing clean cooking in Africa, including the lack of access to
adequate, affordable and sustainable solutions, lack of global attention to the
problem and the absence of smart partnerships to ensure clean cooking access
for all.
“Amidst these challenges,
central to Tanzania’s own commitment is delivering on or recently-launched
10-year Clean Cooking National strategy, which aims to ensure 80% of Tanzanians
use clean cooking solutions by 2034,” she said.
Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas
Gahr Støre said his country will invest approximately $50 million to support
clean cooking energy.
“Improving access to clean
cooking is about improving health outcomes, reducing emissions, and creating
opportunities for economic growth,” he said.
Respiratory and cardiovascular
diseases
The global clean cooking
energy campaign received a boost at the United Nations Climate Change
Conference in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in November last year with the
launch of the African Women Clean Cooking Support Programme(AWCCSP) which
aims to provide clean cooking technologies to women and girls in Africa to
reduce the use of firewood and charcoal.
Dirty cooking causes
respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, increases planet-heating emissions,
and robs women’s of their time, experts said at the conference.
IEA Executive Director Fatih
Birol emphasized the significance of the Summit’s outcome. “This summit had
delivered an emphatic commitment to an issue that has been ignored for too
long” Biro states, underscoring the potential of the $2.2 billion commitment to
support fundamental rights such as health, gender equality and education,
while also mitigating emissions and restoring forests.
Akinwumi Adesina, President of
the African Development Bank Group, announced plans to increase financing for
clean cooking to $200 million annually over the next decade, while also scaling
up the provision of blended finance for clean cooking through Sustainable
Energy Fund for Africa(SEFA).
“We are delighted to play a
leading role… to definitively tackle lack of access to clean cooking, that
affect a billion people in Africa,” he said.
Following the Summit, the IEA
announced plans to employ a “double-lock system” to ensure sustained momentum
behind clean cooking efforts.
This system entails effective
tracking methods to ensure pledges and commitments are fulfilled, alongside
continued efforts to engage more partners and generate additional funds to meet
the $4 billion annual capital investments required until 2030 to achieve
universal access to clean cooking in sub-Saharan Africa.
More than 100 countries,
international institutions, companies, and civil society organizations signed
The Clean Cooking Declaration, reaffirming their
commitment to prioritizing the issue and enhancing efforts toward achieving
universal access for all.
Nearly one in three people
globally still use open fires or basic stoves for cooking thus causing untold
health damage, lower living standards and widening gender inequality, according
to IEA report titled, A Vision for Clean Cooking Access for All.
Women suffer the worst
impacts from the lack of clean cooking. The burden of fuel collection and
making meals typically falls on women and takes on average 5 hours a
day.
“Clean cooking is a
topic that rarely hits the headlines or makes it onto the political agenda,”
said Birol. “And yet, it’s a cornerstone of global efforts to improve energy
access, gender equity, economic development and human dignity,”
Former President of Ireland,
Mary Robinson, cautioned against unfulfilled promises.
“We need to know what
kind of new money is coming in and how it will be spent. We have to test
everything these days, as so many promises are made and not fulfilled,” she
said.
“The fact that 900 million
women in Africa still cook on dirty stoves should not be tolerated in the 21st
century,” Robinson asserted. “And to hear it only requires $4
billion, with $300 million being allocated each year for the next few years.
Isn’t that very doable?”
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