Africa: Follow the Money – Is Africa’s $3.1b Clean Cooking Boom Reaching Households?

Africa has attracted $3.1 billion in clean-cooking commitments since the International Energy Agency’s inaugural Clean Cooking Summit in 2024. But as billions of dollars flow into the sector, the critical question is no longer simply how much money has been committed it is whether that money is reaching households and delivering sustained access to cleaner cooking.

As of September 2026, almost one billion Africans still lack access to clean cooking. The scale of the crisis demands solutions that work in the realities of African households, rather than approaches driven by ideology.

That is why WePlanet Africa launched its Just Stop Cooking campaign last year, challenging the prevailing clean-cooking narrative by advocating for Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), a fossil fuel.

For an environmental NGO to advocate for a fossil fuel may appear contradictory. But with 850,000 people losing their lives annually to household air pollution and forests across Africa being depleted for charcoal and firewood, advocating for electric cooking alone–which may not be viable at scale for decades–would be tone-deaf to the realities facing millions of households.

LPG offers one of the fastest and most pragmatic pathways away from dirty cooking in Africa. The fact that it is receiving about 50% of clean-cooking financing reflects, in our view, pragmatism over ideology.

Let’s follow the money

How much was disbursed?

According to the IEA, nearly $740 million of the $2.2 billion pledged at the 2024 summit had been disbursed by June 2026.

Of the money disbursed, approximately 84% went to the private sector and 16% to the public sector.

Which countries received the money?

The funds were disbursed to projects across 28 African countries.

* Kenya: 19% — the largest individual recipient

* Uganda: 7%

* Tanzania: 7%

* South Africa: 7%

* Senegal: 5%

* Côte d’Ivoire: 4%

* Mozambique: 4%

* Zimbabwe: 3%

* Other recipient countries received 3% or less individually.

Approximately 75% of the investment was directed to specific countries, while the remaining 25% went to cross-cutting support that could not easily be attributed to a single country.

The East African figures are particularly striking. Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania together account for 33% of the country-specific investment.

That makes East Africa an important testing ground for whether clean-cooking investment ultimately translates into sustained household use.

What technologies and fuels were financed?

LPG received by far the largest share of financing:

* LPG: 49%

* Multi-fuel/cross-technology programmes: 26%

* Improved biomass technologies: 17%

* Electric cooking: 7%

* Biogas: 1%

The money was also distributed across different parts of the clean-cooking value chain:

* End-use equipment: 66%

* Technical assistance and market development: 14%

* Capitalising investment funds or companies: 13%

* Fuel-supply infrastructure: 7%

The direction of the financing is significant. Nearly half of the investment went to LPG, reinforcing its central role in Africa’s clean-cooking transition.

But the accountability question remains.

We know how much money has been pledged. We increasingly know how much has been disbursed, where it has gone and which technologies have received it.

What we still need to know is what happened at the other end of that financing chain.

How many households benefited? How many are still using LPG and other cleaner fuels? And are these households able to afford and reliably access the fuel over time?

These are ultimately the measures that should determine whether billions of dollars in clean-cooking finance are translating into meaningful change.

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