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CASE STUDY Granting respite for health and climate across Africa (early 2000s) Clean cooking burns bright across the continent
Pan-Africa
OPEC Fund contribution: At least US$37.9 million across various grants and loans
More than two billion people worldwide rely on traditional fuels like kerosene, wood and charcoal for their daily cooking. Traditional cooking methods contribute to some 3.7 million premature deaths annually, especially among women and children, alongside environmental degradation and climate change. By contrast, clean cooking uses fuels and technologies that produce little to no household air pollution such as electric stoves, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), biogas and improved biomass cookstoves. The OPEC Fund has been investing in clean cooking projects since the early 2000s and gained substantial knowledge across Africa with engagements in Benin, Burkina Faso, Cabo Verde, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Liberia, Madagascar, Mali, Niger, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia and Togo. This expertise has positioned
the OPEC Fund as a key player in clean cooking, particularly since the launch of the institution’s Climate Action Plan in 2022, followed the same year by a loan for Madagascar’s National Clean Cooking Transition Programme. UNIDO Director-General Gerd Müller said at the signing of a partnership agreement with the OPEC Fund: “This partnership will make a difference as we plan to roll-out clean cooking solutions to 500,000 households in five cities across Madagascar.” Commenting on the cross-cutting nature of the program, Somalia’s Minister of Finance Bihi Iman Egeh praised how the OPEC Fund’s approach to clean cooking combines “such critical areas as infrastructure, agroforestry and community empowerment.”
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