New Energy World™
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What’s cooking? LPG and the clean cooking challenge in sub-Saharan Africa
1/10/2025
8 min read
Feature
Almost one-third of the world’s population, around 2.3 billion people, still rely on open fires or rudimentary stoves to prepare meals. In sub-Saharan Africa, four out of five people cook with wood, charcoal, animal dung or agricultural waste. Charlie Bush considers some of the options available for cleaner cooking, in particular the role of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) as a transitional energy solution.
Unlike Asia and Latin America, where clean cooking initiatives have halved reliance on polluting fuels since 2010, the numbers in Africa have continued to rise, with limited interventions unable to keep pace with rapid population growth. The costs are considerable. Household air pollution from burning biomass is estimated to cause 3.7 million premature deaths each year, with women and children at greatest risk. Families typically spend five hours a day collecting fuel and cooking, limiting opportunities for education and paid work. Women and girls are disproportionately affected, not only by this time burden but also by the risks of violence and assault when searching for firewood away from home.
In addition, the environmental impact is devastating. Demand for fuelwood and charcoal is driving deforestation, leading to the loss of forests equivalent to the size of Ireland each year, particularly in eastern and southern Africa. Cooking-related biomass burning produces about 1.3bn t/y of CO2, around 2% of global emissions, and generates more than half of global black carbon emissions.
A range of clean cooking solutions exists to reduce the need to burn biomass. However, despite the scale of the problem, less than a third of clean cooking plans in Africa are funded, and most governments are not expected to achieve universal clean cooking access before the 2050s.