Over 80% of people in sub-Saharan Africa depend on solid fuels such as charcoal and firewood (also known as ‘traditional biomass’) for cooking – more than any other region in the world (IEA, 2010). This situation is not set to change. The International Energy Agency’s (IEA) World Energy Outlook report for 2010, estimates that by 2030 one billion people in sub-Saharan Africa will depend on biomass as their main energy source.

Combined with the use of poorly designed and inefficient cookstoves, this has severe health, social and environmental impacts. Most cooking in sub-Saharan Africa is done on open fire stoves, which contributes to indoor air pollution and respiratory disease such as pneumonia. Women and children spend many productive hours each week gathering fuel wood. The use of the these wood fuels is also increasing the pressures on local natural resources and contributing to climate change through the emission of greenhouse gases from deforestation, when communities extract wood faster than forests can regenerate.

CDKN supported the African Clean Cooking Energy Solutions (ACCES), a project of the World Bank’s Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP). The ACCES is designed to support a market-driven approach to increase the use of clean cook stoves in Africa through addressing key market barriers. These barriers include affordability and quality of cook stoves, consumer education, business development support, access to finance, policy and regulation and sustainable fuel supply. The design of the project was based broadly on the experiences of the Lighting Africa programme, a joint World Bank - International Finance Corporation executed initiative that has been promoting large-scale private sector sales of modern off-grid lighting products.

The ACCES adopted a phase-wise approach. Broadly, the elements of the overall program included:

1. Regional and national consultations and outreach activities to formulate the key components of the programme and select pilot countries - The objective of this phase was to build on past and on-going experiences in the clean cooking sector and gain input from stakeholders to inform the design of the ACCES and generate buy-in and local ownership.

2. Design of operational programmes in selected countries on the basis of country-specific market assessments - These in-depth country assessments focussed on understanding market structures, consumers, stakeholders, socio-cultural and economic dimensions to design the country programmes.

3. Implementation of country programmes to demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach, which allowed lessons and best practices to be formulated to support large-scale replication.

4. Large-scale replication of the programme across the region.

CDKN funding was targeted to support the preparatory regional and national consultation and outreach activities in PHASE I and the in-depth county assessments and program design for 2 pilot countries in PHASE II of the initiative.

Resources:

• World Bank Africa Clean Cooking Energy Solutions: Stakeholder Consultation Report

Lead:  World Bank Energy Sector Management Assistance Programme (ESMAP)

CDKN Funding:  £379,000

The image used is courtesy of the Southern Africa Regional Carbon Facility (2011).