from MARIA MACHARIA in Nairobi, Kenya
Kenya Bureau
NAIROBI, (CAJ News) – AFRICA requires US$4 billion in annual investment to provide 250 million people with clean cooking energy.
This is according to Executive Director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), Fatih Birol, while urging developed nations to scale up their funding to provide clean cooking solutions to millions of households in Africa.
“Without solving the problem of clean cooking in Africa, the global plan of decarbonising would not be meaningful,” he said.
“We believe this issue should be solved because it is a stain on humanity,” Birol told a high-level event to promote access to clean cooking held on the sidelines of COP28 in Dubai.
He announced plans to make clean cooking a key topic on the IEA’s global conference agenda involving more than 50 governments in February 2024.
Dr Akinwumi Adesina, the President of the African Development Bank Group, said his institution would allocate up to 20 percent of its approved annual lending for energy toward clean cooking solutions.
The bank’s contribution is poised to generate $2 billion for clean cooking over the next ten years, Adesina said in a call to action to provide universal access to clean cooking for women in Africa.
Adesina urged national governments to allocate at least 5 percent of the current $70 billion annual energy investment for the provision of clean cooking solutions.
Close to 1 billion people in Africa do not have access to clean cooking and rely on biomass or kerosene, which cause high levels of indoor air pollution.
As a result, about 600,000 African women and children die annually from the hazards of cooking with wooden biomass or fossil fuels, according to official data.
At COP28 this week, an Africa Clean Cooking Consortium was unveiled to accelerate universal access to clean cooking solutions across the continent.
It brought together the African Union Commission, Kenya, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Uganda as well as the government of Ireland and the private sector.
Also on the margins of COP28, Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan launched the African Women Clean Cooking Support Programme.
In September, Kenya announced the inaugural Clean Cooking Delivery Unit, a team of experts embedded within its president’s office, to accelerate clean cooking access.
Sierra Leone has announced similar plans.
– CAJ News