EUEI Partnership Dialogue Facility (PDF)

Summary

Cooking is the major energy use in most of Sub-Saharan Africa, and yet is rarely addressed by Ministries of Energy, which understandably focus their efforts on improving electricity supplies. There is however increasing awareness of the severe health impacts on women and children of cooking on inefficient stoves, and the increasing difficulty of accessing wood and charcoal when wood is extracted unsustainably. What is less well known is the important contribution to national economies that wood and charcoal make, and the potential to considerably improve the sustainability of their extraction and use.

EUEI PDF, together with GIZ (former GTZ) household energy programme, supported national governments in the development of strategies for sustainable cooking fuels supply and demand in Lesotho, Botswana, Malawi and Rwanda. The lessons learnt, and the critical success factors were discussed at a workshop with experts from those countries, and revised generic guidelines for conducting the strategies were produced as a result. The guidelines were published and have been widely circulated. They will form the basis for similar strategy development requested by governments of Mozambique, Tanzania and Ethiopia.