Daniel Otera
Every morning, millions of African women walk into forests, fields, or dumpsites not in search of food or medicine, but of fuel. It is a daily ritual as old as the continent itself, yet one that is quietly costing Africa not just lives, but its future.
A new report by the International Energy Agency (IEA) has revealed that more than one billion Africans still rely on wood, charcoal, dung, and other polluting fuels to cook.
The consequences are staggering—ranging from preventable deaths to environmental degradation and lost economic potential.
“It is one of the greatest injustices of our time, especially in Africa,” said Fatih Birol, Executive Director of the IEA.
The IEA estimates that around 815,000 Africans die prematurely each year due to poor indoor air quality caused by unsafe cooking practices in enclosed or poorly ventilated spaces. The burden falls disproportionately on women and children, who spend the most time near the fire and are therefore more exposed to toxic smoke and fine particulate matter that damage the lungs and heart.
“The IEA estimates that 815,000 premature deaths occur each year in Africa alone due to poor indoor air quality, largely resulting from a lack of access to clean cooking methods,” the agency noted on its website.
These deaths, though often unnoticed in national statistics, represent a public health crisis on a scale comparable to major epidemics—but one that can be prevented with relatively modest investments.
The crisis is not only about health. The IEA warns that unsafe cooking fuels are robbing millions of women and girls of productive time and trapping households in energy poverty. In many rural and peri-urban communities, girls are forced to drop out of school to help their mothers fetch wood. Women spend up to five hours daily collecting firewood or maintaining open fires.
“This takes time away from paid employment or education,” the IEA observed in its 2024 report, A Vision for Clean Cooking Access for All.
Economists argue that this unpaid labour, when multiplied across communities, results in billions of dollars in lost productivity annually. It deepens gender inequality, limits economic mobility, and stifles small-scale entrepreneurship—especially for women in rural areas who might otherwise invest their time in farming, trade, or education.
The environmental cost of dirty cooking is just as dire. In countries like Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Ghana, the heavy reliance on firewood and charcoal is accelerating deforestation, stripping the land of vital tree cover and undermining climate resilience.
Forests act as natural carbon sinks, absorbing emissions that contribute to global warming. The IEA estimates that household cooking using traditional fuels in Africa releases 540 million tonnes of greenhouse gases annually—a figure equivalent to the entire global aviation sector.
This means that something as routine as making a daily meal is fuelling one of the biggest and most overlooked environmental crises on the continent.
Despite the enormity of the challenge, the IEA insists that the solution is both affordable and achievable.
“For once and forever, this problem can be solved with an annual investment of $2 billion per year,” said Birol. “That is about 0.1 percent of global energy investment, which is nothing.”
Following a landmark Clean Cooking Summit held in Paris in 2023, governments and private donors pledged a total of $2.2 billion to help tackle Africa’s clean cooking crisis. As of the latest update, $470 million has already been disbursed.
This funding has led to tangible progress. A stove manufacturing plant is currently under construction in Malawi, while affordable clean cooking programmes are being rolled out in Uganda and Côte d’Ivoire. These initiatives are expected to scale up access to modern alternatives such as solar cookers, renewable gas, and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG)—a cleaner and safer transitional fuel compared to wood or charcoal.
Despite these gains, the IEA warns that sub-Saharan Africa continues to lag behind. While regions like Asia and Latin America have helped nearly 1.5 billion people transition to modern cooking systems since 2010, the number of Africans without access to clean cooking continues to grow.
Without urgent action, the continent risks losing more lives, time, and forests—assets it cannot afford to spare.