Every evening, in millions of African homes, a fire is lit. It cooks the family meal, and it quietly takes something in return: forest cover, clean air, hours of a girl’s school day and, too often, a life. For nearly a billion people on the continent, firewood and charcoal remain the everyday cost of eating. At Rutnak Pearl Development Foundation, we believe it is time to count that cost honestly.
The scale of the problem
Recent figures from the World Bank Group’s civil society sessions put the number of Africans without access to clean cooking at close to one billion, most of them relying on charcoal, firewood or kerosene. Sub-Saharan Africa carries the vast majority of the global burden, and because of population growth the number of affected people has been rising rather than falling. Wood fuel and charcoal together supply an estimated 40 percent of the energy used across Africa, according to UNEP.
The true cost of firewood
Firewood looks free, but families pay for it in four different currencies:
• Money. Where wood or charcoal must be bought, it takes a large share of a poor household’s income. In Kenya alone, households spend roughly 660 million US dollars a year on charcoal.
• Time. Collecting fuel, often over long distances, falls mainly on women and girls. Hours spent gathering wood are hours not spent in classrooms, on farms or in small businesses.
• Health. Smoke is a daily poison, as described below.
• The environment. Each bundle of wood and sack of charcoal draws down forests that protect soil, water and rainfall.
Health and safety: the invisible killer
The WHO estimates that household air pollution from dirty cooking fuels kills about 3.2 million people a year worldwide, and its more recent estimate for 2021 is around 2.9 million deaths, including over 300,000 children under five. For Africa, researchers speaking at a Nairobi forum this year put the toll at around 815,000 deaths annually, with Kenya alone losing about 27,000 people. Earlier analysis found that in sub-Saharan Africa, household air pollution accounted for a larger share of deaths than HIV/AIDS or malaria.
Cooking over smoky fires exposes women and young children to levels of fine particles and carbon monoxide many times above safe limits. The damage shows up as pneumonia in children, chronic lung disease and heart problems in adults, and complications in pregnancy. Open fires also cause burns and house fires, and the long trek for fuel exposes women and girls to injury and personal danger. Safety, in other words, begins in the kitchen.
Deforestation and a warming climate
UN climate experts have found that traditional charcoal production in particular has driven large-scale forest loss. When trees go, so do the carbon stores, the shade, the soil stability and the water catchment they provide. Incomplete burning of wood and charcoal also releases methane, carbon monoxide and black carbon, a powerful short-lived climate pollutant, according to the WHO.
Africa contributes least to global warming yet suffers some of its harshest effects. The World Meteorological Organization reports that climate extremes cost African countries between 2 and 5 percent of GDP each year on average, with some governments diverting up to 9 percent of their budgets to disaster response. Adaptation in sub-Saharan Africa is estimated to cost 30 to 50 billion US dollars annually this decade, and up to 118 million extremely poor people could be exposed to drought, floods and extreme heat by 2030 without adequate action. Africa’s latest assessment describes 2024 as one of the hottest years on record, with severe drought in southern Africa, devastating floods elsewhere, rising displacement and growing pressure on food, water and health systems. Deforestation for fuel makes every one of these shocks worse, because cleared land holds less water, erodes faster and offers farmers less protection.
What the World Bank is actually doing
There has been a lot of talk of an international “crackdown” on charcoal. Our review of current World Bank materials shows something different: not a ban, but a large and growing push to help households move away from charcoal and firewood by making cleaner options available and affordable. The main elements are these:
• Mission 300. The World Bank Group and the African Development Bank are working to bring electricity to 300 million Africans by 2030, with clean cooking treated as part of the same agenda. Since the 2024 Paris Summit on Clean Cooking in Africa, the World Bank Group reports mobilising 2.2 billion US dollars, while the African Development Bank has pledged 2 billion over ten years.
• Results-based financing. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the World Bank-supported FOREST Program launched a results-based financing mechanism in February 2026 to pay private firms for getting clean cookstoves made, sold, serviced and actually used.
• Outcome bonds. A 200 million US dollar Clean Cooking Outcome Bond is financing electric cookers and improved biomass stoves in Ghana, aiming to reach about 1.3 million people.
• A global roadmap. With the WHO, the World Bank has published a roadmap towards net-zero clean cooking for all.
The approach is not without critics. Some commentators argue that international lenders are too reluctant to finance LPG, which the WHO and IEA regard as a clean option, and that this could slow the transition for households that cannot yet afford electric cooking. It is a debate worth following closely, and one on which communities should have a voice.
Why this matters for the Sustainable Development Goals
Clean cooking is one of the rare investments that moves many SDGs at once:
• SDG 1 and 8 (No Poverty, Decent Work): lower fuel bills, time saved and new jobs in stove and fuel supply chains.
• SDG 3 (Good Health): fewer deaths from pneumonia, heart and lung disease, and fewer burns.
• SDG 4 and 5 (Education, Gender Equality): girls and women freed from hours of fuel collection.
• SDG 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy): the clean cooking target is among the furthest off track.
• SDG 13 and 15 (Climate Action, Life on Land): less methane and black carbon, and forests left standing.
Where Rutnak Pearl stands
We do not believe communities should be told to stop using the fuel they have unless something better is within reach. Real change comes from affordable, reliable alternatives, such as improved stoves, briquettes made from waste, biogas and clean fuels, combined with tree planting and community education. We call on governments, funders and partners to put clean cooking at the centre of climate, health and development plans, and to design programmes with the women who cook every day.
Join us. Whether you are a donor, a partner or a neighbour with a stove that needs replacing, there is a place for you in this work. Contact us at info@rutnakfoundation.org or visit www.rutnakfoundation.org to find out how.