The African Development Bank Group (AfDB) on Wednesday pledged $2 billion over 10 years towards clean cooking solutions in Africa as a desirable step towards saving 600,000 lives, mainly women and children each year, from fossil fuel hazards
Speaking at the summit on Clean Cooking in Africa in Paris, the Bank Group’s President, Dr Akinwumi Adesina, said the institution would now commit 20% of all its financing of energy projects towards promoting safe alternatives to cooking with charcoal, wood and biomass.
Receiving heads of state and government, and leaders of international organizations at the Elysee Palace to discuss the outcomes of the summit, French President Emmanuel Macron, praised the AfDB’s leading role and commitment to delivering clean cooking in Africa.
The summit resulted in $2.2 billion pledges from the public and private sectors.
The French President said: “As part of the Paris Pact for People and the Planet, and with the commitment of Tanzania, Norway, the International Energy Agency, the African Development Bank, and many other partners, we are taking a step forward against this silent scourge today. We are mobilizing $2.2 billion to provide clean alternatives to populations in Africa.
“France pledges to invest €100 million over five years in clean cooking methods and will mobilize even more through the Paris Pact for People and the Planet and Finance in Common”, Macron added.
A news report from African Press Organisation (APO) Group circulated on behalf of the AfDB, indicated that the AfDB President during his address at the summit plenary, noted that in Africa a staggering 1.2 billion people lacked access to clean cooking facilities.
Speaking at the forum, Adesina declared that it was time to end the sight of African women and girls, backs bent bearing heavy loads, walking kilometres each day, often with a lack of security just to cook daily family meals. He noted that the tools for enabling clean cooking access are readily available and affordable but had not been sufficiently prioritised.
He said: “As a result over 10 years, six million people, mainly women, will die prematurely. That is not acceptable,” he told the summit attended by some 20 African heads of state and government, representatives of all leading international organisations and global businesses.
“Access to clean cooking is about more than cooking, it is about dignity… It is more than about lighting a stove, it is about life itself. It is about fairness, justice and equity for women,” Adesina added.
Recalling how as a youth he had damaged his own eyesight blowing into smoking wooden fires and how a friend had died in a kerosene-related explosion, the development finance expert pointed out that globally lack of access to clean cooking affects over two billion people—more than half of whom are in Africa, typically cooking over open fires and basic stoves.
The AfDB chief clarified that using charcoal, wood, agricultural waste, and animal dung as fuel usually make the users to inhale harmful toxic fumes and smoke with dire consequences for health, lamenting that fossil fuel is the second leading cause of premature death in Africa.
This is even as he noted that opportunities for education, employment and independence were also severely impacted because women instead spend hours each day foraging for rudimentary fuels.
Adesina said: “This momentous summit on clean cooking in Africa is the largest ever gathering of leaders and policy makers dedicated to confronting the issue of access to clean cooking in Africa. We can fix it. “There is nothing improved in continued suffering. No woman in Africa should have to cook again with firewood, charcoal or biomass. It is time to restore dignity to women who cook in Africa.
“Providing access to clean cooking is not only right, fair and just—it is also the globally responsible thing to do”, Adesina added.
He also explained that the bank’s pledge of $200 million per year represented an important contribution to the $4 billion per year needed to allow African families to have access to clean cooking by 2030, noting that in addition to its dramatic toll on human lives, the lack of clean cooking facilities is one of the main causes of deforestation in Africa.
International Energy Agency figures show that globally 200 million hectares of forest, 110 million of them in Africa, were at risk because of the climatic effects of cooking with charcoal, biomass, and wood.
Adesina described the event in which close to 60 countries took part, with over 1,000 delegates in attendance, as a major turning point on an issue which had gone too long unaddressed.
He added that commitments announced at the summit go beyond the money alone—they set out concrete steps on how governments, institutions and the private sector can work together to solve the clean cooking challenge this decade.
In his address at the summit, IEA Executive Director, Birol said: “This summit has delivered an emphatic commitment to an issue that has been ignored by too many people, for too long. We still have a long way to go, but the outcome of this summit, $2.2 billion committed, can help support fundamental rights such as health, gender equality and education while also reducing emissions and restoring forests.”
Birol said the IEA would build on the summit’s achievements by continuing to play a convening role to engage more willing partners and generate new funds to help meet the $4 billion a year in capital investments required between now and 2030.
According to him, reaching this level of funding would enable the world to deploy the stoves and fuel delivery infrastructure needed to reach universal access to clean cooking in sub-Saharan Africa.
Denmark’s Minister for Development Cooperation and Global Climate Policy Dan Jannik Jørgensen praised the African Development Bank’s initiative to establish a dedicated clean cooking sub-program under the Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa (SEFA).
Established in 2011, SEFA is a multi-donor Special Fund managed which provides catalytic finance to unlock private sector investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency. It offers technical assistance and concessional finance instruments to remove market barriers, build a more robust pipeline of projects and improve the risk-return profile of individual investments.
The AfDB has been a key advocate for clean cooking access in Africa. In July 2023, it published in collaboration with the IEA a comprehensive report on clean cooking solutions.
At COP28, the African Development Bank hosted a round table on clean cooking during which it committed to allocating 20% of its annual energy lending towards clean cooking, generating $2 billion over the next decade.
The Bank also supported Tanzania’s clean cooking initiative, which focuses on improving women’s access to clean cooking solutions, launched by President Samia Suluhu Hassan at COP28.
