Clean Cooking in Africa 2026

Nearly 2 billion people worldwide still lack access to clean cooking solutions, half of them in sub-Saharan Africa. The traditional use of biomass for cooking is one of the world’s leading causes of premature death, responsible for 2.5 million deaths annually, disproportionately affecting women and children. It also burdens households with hours of time collecting fuel each day – time lost to education and other productive activities – and generates emissions comparable to those from international aviation and shipping combined. Yet closing the clean cooking gap could be achieved with an investment of just USD 4 billion a year.

Despite its importance, clean cooking has long been overlooked by the international community. While the number of people without access has halved globally since 2010, driven by rapid progress in Asia, it continues to rise in sub-Saharan Africa. Recognising clean cooking access as a defining challenge for Africa’s prosperity, the International Energy Agency (IEA) hosted the first International Summit on Clean Cooking in Africa in Paris in 2024, elevating the challenge on the global agenda and mobilising USD 2.2 billion in commitments.

In a new report, Clean Cooking in Africa: Progress Report 2026, the IEA offers a new stocktake of progress and remaining gaps across sub-Saharan Africa. The report assesses progress towards universal access across key dimensions, examines the impact of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, and tracks delivery of the financial and policy commitments made at the 2024 Summit.

The analysis draws on the latest available data, with ongoing efforts by the IEA to address remaining gaps in global clean cooking data and strengthen the tracking of progress. This report is the latest entry in the IEA’s 25-year history of tracking progress on energy access and promoting clean cooking as a crucial part of the global energy agenda. The tracking in this report will continue to be updated in the future.