- Around 15 million people gained access to clean cooking in sub-Saharan Africa in 2025, and the region is set for its fastest-ever expansion in access to clean cooking in 2026.
- One billion people, however, continue to cook with highly polluting fuels like firewood, charcoal and kerosene, as population growth outpaces progress.
- Of the $2.2 billion pledged to furthering clean cooking access in Africa at the 2024 Summit on Clean Cooking Africa, $740 million has been disbursed across 30 countries, according to an International Energy Agency report.
- The report estimates that Africa could reach universal access by 2040 if it matches the fastest historical rates of progress, backed by sustained investment and stronger policies, but the ongoing Middle East crisis has seen a surge in prices of cooking gas.
Sub-Saharan Africa is on track to record its fastest-ever annual expansion in access to clean cooking in 2026, according to a new report by the International Energy Agency. But population growth continues to outpace those gains, leaving more than 1 billion people without access to clean cooking.
The region is home to the world’s largest population still reliant on firewood, charcoal and kerosene for everyday cooking, according to the IEA. The World Health Organization says household air pollution, much of which is generated by these polluting cooking fuels, is linked to around 2.9 million premature deaths annually, with women and children bearing the greatest burden.
The “Clean Cooking in Africa 2026: Progress Report” estimates that around 15 million people gained access to clean cooking in sub-Saharan Africa in 2025, about 35% above the average annual gains recorded for the previous five years. If confirmed, this would be the highest annual increase on record. Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya and Nigeria made the most notable gains.
The estimate is based on a mathematical model that combines data on imports of cookstoves (cooking appliances combining a stove and an oven) and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), investments in the infrastructure, fuels and technology needed for clean cooking, and policy tracking, rather than household surveys, which remain the most reliable measure of clean cooking access but take years to compile. The IEA said the 2025 figures should, therefore, be treated as preliminary until confirmed by future household surveys.
Even so, Fatih Birol, the IEA’s executive director, has said the latest estimates are a major turning point for the continent.
“The pace of clean cooking delivery in sub-Saharan Africa is now triple the rate seen in 2010,” the report said. At a high-level meeting on July 9 to review progress since the 2024 Summit on Clean Cooking in Africa Birol described the progress as “very good news.”
Around 2.1 billion people worldwide, roughly a quarter of the global population, still cook over open fires or on inefficient stoves burning kerosene, biomass (wood, dung, crop waste) or charcoal, generating harmful household air pollution, according to the WHO. These traditional cooking methods emit about 1.2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent annually, including emissions linked to forest degradation. That amount is roughly equivalent to the emissions of international aviation and shipping combined, according to the IEA.
South Asia, Southeast Asia and China, broadly grouped by the IEA as “developing Asia,” historically had the world’s largest number of people without clean cooking access. Since 2010, however, 1.7 billion people in the region have gained access to clean cooking, driven largely by government programs in China, India and Indonesia, the IEA report said. Africa could reach universal access by 2040 if it matches the fastest historical rates of progress, backed by sustained investment and stronger policies, the agency estimates. Speaking at the IEA meeting, Kenyan President William Ruto said that achieving universal household access in his country, where only 32% of the population has clean cooking and about 38 million people remain without it, would require about $1 billion.
“The financing challenge extends across Africa,” he said. “Closing the continent’s clean cooking access gap will require investment at scale; yet annual financing remains far below what is needed.”
At the inaugural Summit on Clean Cooking in Africa, held in Paris in 2024, governments, development partners and private organizations pledged $2.2 billion in blended finance toward clean cooking in Africa. As of June 2026, about $740 million of this amount had been disbursed to projects across 30 African countries, the IEA report says, with 84% coming from the private sector and 16% from governments.
Kenya took the largest share of disbursements (19%), followed by Uganda, Tanzania and South Africa at 7% each.
Roughly two-thirds of the $740 million went to equipment such as cookstoves and LPG cylinders, with the rest split between technical assistance and market development (14%), investments in clean cooking businesses (13%), and fuel-supply infrastructure, such as LPG storage and bottling (7%). In terms of fuel, about half of all funding (49%) was used for LPG, against 17% for improved biomass stoves, 8% each for electric cooking and biogas, and 26% for multifuel or cross-cutting support for different clean cooking solutions such as affordability programs.
LPG is considered a clean cooking fuel under WHO guidelines because it burns far more cleanly than firewood, charcoal and kerosene, producing much lower levels of harmful air pollutants. But it is also a fossil fuel, meaning it is less environmentally friendly in the long term than electric cooking and other renewable alternatives.
Birol said at the high level-meeting that the IEA has raised a further $900 million in commitments since the Paris summit and recorded 120 new clean-cooking policies across Africa.
Despite the gains, the IEA warns that population growth continues to erase much of the progress.
“Even though there was a turning point, as we see an acceleration of clean cooking access, we are far from where we would like to be,” Birol said, adding that four out of five families in Africa still depend on traditional cooking practices.
The number of people without access to clean cooking in sub-Saharan Africa increased by around 14 million in 2024, according to the IEA report. Within the region, Southern Africa was the only subregion to record a decline in the number of people without access, while Central Africa experienced the largest increase.
“Nearly 2 billion people worldwide still lack access to clean cooking solutions, half of them in sub-Saharan Africa,” Damilola Ogunbiyi, CEO of the U.N.-backed Sustainable Energy for All, told Mongabay via email.
She said expanding electricity access and clean cooking should go hand in hand rather than be treated as separate policy goals.
“By integrating electric cooking into national electrification efforts — and using schools as a catalyst — countries can accelerate community-wide adoption of clean cooking while maximizing the social, economic and climate benefits of expanding electricity access,” she said.
Caroline Sawe, an energy researcher at the Stockholm Environment Institute at the University of York, U.K., said the report demonstrated encouraging momentum, but implementation must accelerate to match Africa’s rapidly growing population.
“Access to energy plays a major role in empowering households and the co-benefits of shifting to cleaner energy sources are immense, both from a health and economic perspective,” she said in an email to Mongabay.
Given that roughly a third of the funding pledged for clean cooking in Africa has been disbursed, Sawe said donors could further increase support for the transition towards clean cooking fuels to reduce the health and economic burdens associated with cooking with biomass fuels.
The IEA said the Middle East crisis, particularly the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, has exposed a fuel-security risk to Africa’s clean-cooking transition. Though the region has limited direct exposure to LPG supplies from the Persian Gulf, the disruption has triggered sharp price spikes and shortages in several countries.
Despite being Africa’s third-largest gas producer, Nigeria, for instance, still imports some of its cooking gas. When the Strait of Hormuz crisis hit, prices surged nationwide, pushing many households back to charcoal and firewood.
The experience pushed the IEA to begin building a dedicated LPG security program, focused on storage, supply chains, and industry-government coordination, Birol said.
“This is very important because we need to build storage capacity, working with the public and private sector, and making the advanced economies and the countries who use a lot of LPG in Africa connect and work together,” he said.
The agency has started consultations with major LPG producers and suppliers, with the initiative set to advance further at an industry meeting later this year, he added.
Banner image: Women and youth entrepreneurs in Kenya receiving training in clean cooking techniques. Image courtesy of UNDP Kenya via Flickr (CC BY-NC 4.0).
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