Paris: One billion Africans are exposed to health and environmental hazards due to cooking on open fires or using harmful fuels, the International Energy Agency (IEA) revealed in a recent report. The IEA highlighted that this issue contributes to the same level of greenhouse gas emissions annually as the aviation sector.
According to Nam News Network, the report noted that two billion people globally rely on open fires or rudimentary stoves fueled by wood, charcoal, agricultural waste, or manure. This practice not only endangers health due to poor indoor air quality but also exacerbates deforestation, impacting natural carbon sinks that are crucial for combating global warming.
The IEA report estimates that poor indoor air quality leads to 815,000 premature deaths annually in Africa, with women and children disproportionately affected. They spend significant time gathering fuel and maintaining fires, detracting from opportunities for paid work or education.
A significant summit organized by IEA in Paris last year resulted in $2.2 billion in commitments from public and private sectors, along with political pledges from 12 African governments. Since the summit, $470 million has been allocated, leading to tangible outcomes such as a stove factory in Malawi and affordable stove programs in Uganda and Ivory Coast.
The IEA's report evaluates progress since the summit and provides a roadmap for African nations to achieve low-cost, clean cooking solutions by 2040. Although 1.5 billion people in Asia and Latin America have gained access to modern cooking methods since 2010, sub-Saharan Africa still faces a growing number of people without clean cooking access.
IEA's Fatih Birol emphasized that solving this issue would require an investment of $2 billion annually, a mere 0.1% of global energy investment. Proposed alternatives include solar-generated electricity, renewable gas, and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), which, despite being a fossil fuel, is preferable to deforestation.
The agency predicts that adopting these solutions could prevent 4.7 million premature deaths in sub-Saharan Africa by 2040 and cut the continent's greenhouse gas emissions by 540 million tons annually, equivalent to the emissions of the global aviation industry.