Last week, the Kenya Clean Cooking Transition Strategy was validated by stakeholders drawn from the government, development organizations, civil society organizations, and academia.

Dr. Faith Wandera-Odongo, Deputy Director of Renewable Energy at Kenya’s Ministry of Energy and Petroleum, was a keynote speaker during the event. She underscored that cooking is a multisectoral and national issue and should not be viewed as a women’s issue.

ACCESS Coalition provided input in the development of the strategy document, including advocating for new approaches to unlocking clean cooking progress. These include adopting needs-based planning approaches that are backed by good data, socially and financially viable solutions and transition pathways, and accelerating the opportunity to ‘leapfrog’ to electric cooking in countries with good grid coverage.

About 2.3 billion people globally lack access to clean cooking and use polluting fuels and technologies for their cooking, endangering their health and causing environmental destruction.

The government seeks to strengthen partnerships and foster collaboration with all sector actors in implementing the strategy. The estimated budget for the strategy implementation is US$455 million, and the next steps include the development of a financing strategy to mobilize resources.

In 2022, about 3.2 million deaths were linked to household air pollution caused by cooking fuels and technologies. The strategy adopts the WHO air quality guidelines on clean cooking and is focused on the Kenya government’s goal of achieving universal access to modern energy cooking services by 2028.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), about 29 countries in sub-Saharan Africa have access rates below 20 percent, reaching around 990 million in 2022, while in Developing Asia, around 1.2 billion people lack clean cooking facilities.

The strategy will be launched during the Summit on Clean Cooking in Africa which will be held in May 2024 in Paris, France. The summit will be co-hosted by IEA and the Africa Development Bank and co-chaired by Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, and IEA’s Executive Director Fatih Birol.