COP31: Two-thirds of Africa’s US$2.2bn clean cooking pledges yet to be delivered

Two years after leaders pledged US$2.2 billion to expand clean cooking in Africa, only about US$740 million has been paid out, leaving roughly two-thirds of the money, about US$1.46 billion, still to be delivered.

The figures were presented at a Leaders’ Roundtable on Clean Cooking in Africa at COP31 in Antalya, Türkiye, on 12 November. The meeting was co-hosted by the COP31 Presidency of Türkiye, the United Republic of Tanzania, the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the Clean Cooking Alliance.

The pledges were made at the first Summit on Clean Cooking in Africa, held in Paris in 2024 and co-chaired by Tanzania’s President Samia Suluhu Hassan. The IEA has been tracking the commitments since, and its Executive Director, Fatih Birol, told the roundtable that about a third of the money had been disbursed (about 34 cents of every dollar pledged).

“Where did this money go? It went to 28 African countries supporting concrete projects,” Birol said.

President Samia said she was “encouraged that our collective efforts are beginning to deliver tangible results.” According to her, “by July 2026 approximately US dollar 740 million of the commitment made in Paris has been deployed across 22 African countries.”

She said a further US$900 million in commitments had been mobilised since the Paris summit, bringing the total to about US$3.1 billion.

“Our success must be measured not only by the resources mobilized but also by the number of families gaining access to affordable, reliable and sustainable clean cooking solutions,” she told the leaders.

Nearly one billion Africans (about six in every ten people on the continent) still lack access to clean cooking, contributing to about 850,000 premature deaths every year (more than 2,300 a day), President Samia said.

To Birol, it is “one of the greatest injustices in this world.” Traditional cooking, he said, generates 1.2 gigatonnes of greenhouse gases a year. “If you want to know what is 1.2 gigaton, it is equal to the emissions from international aviation and shipping put together.”

“Why I say it’s a big injustice … because it is easily solve problem if we have the finance for that,” he added.

Kenya’s special envoy, Ambassador Ali Mohamed, who spoke on behalf of President William Ruto, said Africa’s clean cooking challenge “requires at least $2 billion every year.”

“Our success of course will be measured not just by commitment. It will be measured by the financing that is deployed,” he said.

The President of the OPEC Fund for International Development, Abdulhamid Alkhalifa, cited a different figure: “The IEA estimates that Africa needs $4 billion a year for clean cooking issue.” That amount, he said, is “less than … what the world invest in energy in a single day.”

“Let us make the smoke-filled kitchen a chapter of Africa’s past, not future,” he urged.

For Norway’s special envoy, Hans Olav Ibrekk, the message was clear: “Clean cooking is climate action. We need to move from commitments to implementation at scale.”

Lesotho’s Deputy Prime Minister, Justice Nthomeng Majara, warned that “isolated projects and pilot interventions will not be sufficient to achieve universal access.”

“Uganda recognizes that access to clean cooking is not merely an energy issue,” said Uganda President Yoweri Museveni’s representative. She said the country’s strategy targets universal access to clean cooking “by 2040 with an intermediate target of 50% access by 2030,” and that President Museveni has issued Executive Order No. 3 banning charcoal.

The next test comes at the second Summit on Clean Cooking in Africa, to be held in Nairobi, Kenya, on 27–28 January 2027, which Birol will co-chair with President Ruto.

“We are going to fix this problem and solve this biggest injustice of the humanity,” Birol told the meeting.