The Rockefeller Foundation, Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet Inc. (Global Energy Alliance), The Clean Cooking Alliance, and Energy Corps have launched the Clean Cooking Accelerator Initiative to expand access to modern cooking technologies in Africa.
The project was announced at the High-Level Dialogue on Advancing Energy Access and Cooking Solutions during the International Energy Agency (IEA) 2026 Ministerial. The session was chaired by IEA executive director Dr Fatih Birol, Kenya’s Minister of Energy and Petroleum James Opiyo Wandayi, U.S. secretary of Energy Christopher Wright, and Norway’s Minister of Energy Terje Lien Aasland.
The Initiative reflects what the organisations described as a renewed commitment to achieving universal access to clean cooking. They said the effort is aimed at improving health outcomes, saving lives, empowering women and children, creating local jobs, reducing forest degradation, and building economic opportunity across the continent.
According to available data, approximately one billion people in Africa still rely on traditional fuels such as wood and charcoal for cooking. The World Health Organisation associates household air pollution from these fuels with more than 810,000 premature deaths annually.
These fuels and cooking appliances significantly increase indoor air pollution in Sub-Saharan Africa, especially affecting women and children who spend more time near cooking areas. The health risks linked to this exposure include respiratory illnesses and other long-term conditions.
The IEA has identified clean cooking as a defining challenge for Africa’s prosperity. It estimates that closing the global clean cooking gap will require more than $2 billion per year in investment. Although progress has been made in some parts of the world, access remains uneven.
In Sub-Saharan Africa, population growth has outpaced improvements in clean cooking access. The gap continues to widen by an estimated 14 million people each year, as the number of those without clean cooking solutions increases.
Modern clean cooking solutions include electric stoves, biogas, bioethanol, liquid petroleum gas (LPG), and efficient biomass stoves. These technologies produce far fewer harmful particles compared to traditional fuels like wood or charcoal.
Expanding access to clean cooking is also considered an important part of Mission 300, an initiative led by the World Bank and African Development Bank, with support from The Rockefeller Foundation, Global Energy Alliance, Sustainable Energy for All, and others. Mission 300 aims to provide 300 million Africans with electricity by 2030.
The Clean Cooking Accelerator Initiative will initially start in about half a dozen countries, which are expected to be announced in the coming month. It plans to expand to additional Sub-Saharan African countries that request support and demonstrate readiness and momentum toward universal access to clean cooking.
The organisations said the overarching goal is to improve health, save lives, empower women and children, reduce forest degradation, create local jobs, and build economic opportunity across Africa.
The Initiative seeks to accelerate access to cleaner cooking methods by coordinating technical expertise, catalytic capital, and implementation support. While each participating organisation already has ongoing clean cooking programmes, the new Initiative is designed to bring them together around shared priorities and enable information sharing to maximise collective impact.
In countries that express interest and show readiness, the Initiative will support efforts to strengthen supply chains and invest in infrastructure needed to scale modern cooking solutions.
In select markets, The Rockefeller Foundation, through its Mission 300 Accelerator housed within RF Catalytic Capital, its charitable spin-off, and Energy Corps, are providing support to CoAction Global. The aim is to develop a cohort of Clean Cooking Fellows to strengthen institutional capacity and build investable project pipelines. CoAction Global, an independent nonprofit impact accelerator focused on innovation and investment in hard-to-reach places, manages the Mission 300 Fellowship programme.
Andrew Herscowitz, CEO of the Mission 300 Accelerator, RF Catalytic Capital, Inc., said, “The Rockefeller Foundation and its Mission 300 Accelerator are thrilled to be working with these organizations to take on an incredible development opportunity: expanding access to clean, modern cooking methods. There are smart, easy solutions that can prevent hundreds of thousands of people needlessly dying from indoor air pollution each year, and we are excited to try to drive investment into solving this problem.”
Dymphna van der Lans, CEO of the Clean Cooking Alliance, said the focus must now shift from commitments to delivery. “We’re seeing real momentum behind clean cooking across Africa, but momentum alone doesn’t deliver solutions to households, schools and institutions. What matters now is building the capacity, partnerships, and market foundations that allow countries to move from targets to implementation. This collaboration is an important step in making that shift possible,” she said.
Energy Corps, a nonprofit organisation working to end energy poverty by connecting local leadership with global energy expertise, philanthropy, and NGO organisation, said it will channel philanthropic capital to mobilise private-sector investment and industrial capacity. The organisation noted that the support will strengthen capacity building and boost investment in bankable projects aimed at addressing supply-chain and infrastructure bottlenecks.
Toby Rice, CEO and Founder of Energy Corps, said the Initiative is designed to move beyond pledges. “This Initiative is built to turn commitment into real projects, real infrastructure, and real access by mobilising more capital,” he said.
