- Two Years On, Africa Is Still Waiting for US$1.46 Billion Pledged for Clean Cooking
Two years after African leaders secured a US$2.2 billion pledge to expand clean cooking, only about US$740 million has been disbursed. The remaining US$1.46 billion is more than a funding shortfall: it is a test of whether international commitments can be converted into affordable energy options for households.
The figures, presented at a COP31 leaders’ roundtable in Antalya, Turkey, show that roughly 34 cents of every dollar pledged at the 2024 Africa
Clean Cooking Summit in Paris has been paid out. The money has supported projects in 28 African countries, but the pace of delivery remains far behind the scale of the challenge.
The gap is especially stark because the consequences of inadequate access are not confined to energy policy.
Tanzania’s President Samia Suluhu Hassan said nearly one billion Africans about six in every ten people on the continent still lack access to clean cooking, contributing to an estimated 850,000 premature deaths each year.
The economic and climate costs compound the health burden. International Energy Agency Executive Director Fatih Birol said traditional cooking generates 1.2 gigatonnes of greenhouse gases annually, comparable to the combined emissions of international aviation and shipping.
The figures frame clean cooking as a development challenge with consequences for public health, household welfare and climate goals.
Yet the financing response remains fragmented between headline pledges, subsequent commitments and money reaching projects. President Samia said about US$740 million from the Paris commitment had been deployed across 22 African countries by July 2026.
She also said a further US$900 million had been mobilised since the summit, lifting total commitments to about US$3.1 billion.
Those figures should not be conflated. The original US$2.2 billion pledge is not the same as the larger total of commitments announced since.
And neither a pledge nor a commitment necessarily means funds have been disbursed or a clean-cooking solution has reached a household. That distinction is central to measuring progress.
The roundtable’s bluntest demand was for a shift from announcements to implementation. Norway’s special envoy Hans Olav Ibrekk said: “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 would not be enough to achieve universal access.
That scale problem becomes clearer when annual financing estimates are compared. Kenya’s special envoy, speaking for President William Ruto, said Africa needs at least US$2 billion a year to address the clean-cooking challenge.
OPEC Fund President Abdulhamid Alkhalifa cited an IEA estimate of US$4 billion annually. The estimates differ substantially, but both suggest that the undisbursed US$1.46 billion represents only part of the capital required.
The difference also points to the need for greater clarity about what financing estimates include: equipment, fuel supply, electricity access, distribution networks, consumer subsidies or all of these.
Without clarity on costs and targets, headline figures risk obscuring the practical question of what each dollar is meant to finance.
The challenge is not simply to move money faster. It is to finance solutions that households can afford to use consistently.
A stove can be distributed, but if the fuel or electricity needed to operate it is too expensive or unreliable, access on paper may not translate into sustained adoption.
The success of financing should therefore be measured not only by disbursements or equipment delivered, but by whether families can keep using cleaner technologies.
President Samia made that point at the roundtable, saying success should be measured by “the number of families gaining access to affordable, reliable and sustainable clean cooking solutions.”
That standard is more demanding than counting pledges. It links the financial pipeline directly to the household experience.
There are several potential sources of capital, and governments are calling for a blend. Uganda and Lesotho urged greater use of concessional financing, private-sector investment, grants, innovative instruments and results-based finance.
These tools can serve different purposes: grants and concessional finance can help make solutions accessible to low-income users, while private investment can support supply chains, distribution and manufacturing.
But the public and private roles must be complementary. Investors will need predictable demand and viable business models; low-income households may need support that commercial financing alone cannot provide.
Public institutions can help close that affordability gap, while private firms can expand production and delivery. If programmes rely too heavily on one source, the transition could either stall for lack of capital or leave the poorest households behind.
For African governments, the financing gap also creates a planning problem. Projects that depend on international support may be delayed when pledged money does not arrive.
Delays can weaken delivery capacity and make it harder to persuade communities and businesses that cleaner cooking options will be dependable.
Predictable disbursements matter because the transition requires sustained programmes, not isolated pilots.
The next major checkpoint will be the second Summit on Clean Cooking in Africa, scheduled for Nairobi on January 27–28, 2027. The meeting will need to answer more than how much additional funding can be announced.
It will need to show what has been delivered from the existing commitments, where the remaining money is expected to go, and how future disbursements will be tracked.
The unresolved issue is credibility. The Paris pledge established a level of political ambition; the COP31 figures show that ambition has not yet translated into two-thirds of the promised funding.
As leaders prepare to meet again, the measure of progress will be whether the outstanding US$1.46 billion moves from commitment to projects and whether those projects give households cleaner options they can afford to rely on.
