Africa's Clean Cooking Problem Lies Between the Plan and the Deal
New policy analysis: From Targets to Transactions: Fixing Africa’s Clean Cooking Finance Pipeline. Teddy Odindo on why billions find too few deals.
Executive Summary
Suppose the USD 4 billion a year sub-Saharan Africa needs to reach universal clean cooking access by 2030 arrived tomorrow. Too little of it would find a business, asset or borrower ready to take it. This analysis locates the problem between investment planning and financial close. Governments have set targets and begun to mobilise capital, but those targets still have to become businesses and assets that investors can finance repeatedly. Drawing on how off-grid solar became financeable in Kenya, it argues that each clean cooking fuel market needs a diagnosis of its binding constraint and a financing instrument matched to it. It proposes that Kenya's Clean Cooking Implementation Unit diagnose each market, package investment opportunities starting with household markets, and track transactions to financial close and households reached, alongside funds committed and disbursed.
Key Findings
Nearly 12 million people in sub-Saharan Africa gained clean cooking access in 2024, but population growth added about 14 million to the number without it. Investment in stoves and fuel infrastructure was USD 770 million in 2024, about one-fifth of the USD 4 billion a year needed for universal access by 2030. African countries have set more than 30 new clean cooking targets and over 120 policies and programmes since 2024; few published indicators count deals reaching financial close. In a Nairobi pilot, LPG refills cost less per meal than charcoal, but the USD 26 starter kit was out of reach: the first purchase, not the fuel, was the barrier. Off-grid solar took about eleven years in Kenya to move from a USD 10 million receivables loan to a USD 156 million securitisation in Kenya shillings. A USD 179.6 million guarantee could not keep KOKO running once Kenya declined to authorise its carbon-credit sales; Ghana's authorisation shows the other outcome. Kenya's Clean Cooking Implementation Unit could diagnose, package and track deals to financial close, shifting the measure of progress from money mobilised to markets able to absorb it.
Suppose the USD 4 billion a year that sub-Saharan Africa needs for universal clean cooking arrived tomorrow. Teddy Odindo's answer to what would happen next is uncomfortable: too little of it would find a business, asset or borrower ready to take it.
The scale of the challenge is not in doubt. Nearly 12 million people in sub-Saharan Africa gained access to clean cooking in 2024, yet population growth added about 14 million to the number without it. Investment in stoves and fuel infrastructure was USD 770 million, roughly one-fifth of the annual need. Governments have responded with ambition: more than 30 new targets and over 120 policies and programmes since 2024, and USD 2.2 billion pledged at the 2024 summit, of which about one-third had reached projects two years later.
Odindo, an ETA Fellow, argues that the binding constraint now sits between investment planning and financial close. A financing-gap figure tells a government how much capital is missing. It does not show why a particular enterprise, asset or contract cannot attract it. Targets have political owners; individual transactions often do not.
Diagnosis before money
A pilot in Nairobi shows why the diagnosis has to come first. Among 120 low-income households, small LPG refills cost less per meal than charcoal. The barrier was the starter kit, at about USD 26. More capital alone would not have revealed that, and a financing instrument designed around the national target would have missed it.
Clean cooking is also several markets, not one. LPG needs storage, bottling, cylinders and retail networks, and illegal refilling discourages marketers from investing in cylinders. Electric cooking depends on tariffs and reliability as much as appliances. And some households sit outside any commercial market: at current prices, clean cooking would cost more than 10 percent of monthly income for nearly 600 million people in the region. The analysis matches capital to the constraint: debt or equity for a proven firm short of growth capital, a guarantee for a deal blocked by one identifiable risk, patient capital for an immature market, and public finance where commercial terms cannot reach.
How a market becomes financeable
Off-grid solar shows the path. Pay-as-you-go sales created payment records that lenders could assess. In Kenya, the first commercial loan secured on mobile-money receivables in 2014 was worth USD 10 million. By 2025, a USD 156 million securitisation in Kenya shillings had five commercial banks in its senior tranche. That took about eleven years, deal by deal, across several firms. Clean cooking has fewer firms with that kind of record, and investment is highly concentrated, which is why government has to shorten the path.
What a guarantee cannot do
The case of KOKO Networks marks the limits of financial engineering. In 2025, the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency issued a USD 179.6 million guarantee for KOKO's Kenyan business, including cover against breach of government commitments affecting its carbon credits. When the Kenyan government declined to authorise those credit sales, KOKO ceased operations on 31 January 2026. The guarantee transferred some political risk; it could not supply the decision the business depended on. Ghana shows the other outcome: its 2024 authorisation of a cookstove programme led to the first credits being transferred in 2025, and Zambia authorised a similar programme in 2026.
A home for the missing link
The paper's Kenyan argument has sharpened in its final version. Kenya already has much of the architecture: a draft Action Plan and Investment Prospectus, and a Clean Cooking Implementation Unit in the Ministry of Energy and Petroleum, set up as the "central coordination hub" with five fuel working groups. What it lacks is the link from that architecture to financial close. Transactions closed are not yet an indicator.
Odindo proposes three roles for the Unit. First, diagnose each fuel market, with each working group naming its binding constraint and the financing response. Second, package investment opportunities into its pipeline, starting with household markets. Third, track transactions reaching financial close, and households reached, alongside funds committed and disbursed.
That would move the measure of progress from money mobilised to markets able to absorb it. Other governments could adapt the model; Uganda set up a clean cooking unit in its energy ministry in 2025. The financing gap remains a useful measure of need. It is not, the paper concludes, a financing strategy.
The full analysis, including five figures, a capital-matching table and complete references, is available to download.
Suggested Citation
Odindo, T. (2026). From Targets to Transactions: Fixing Africa's Clean Cooking Finance Pipeline. ETA Fellows Programme Signature Analysis. Energy Transition Africa.