The African Development Bank Group has called on governments and partners to make clean cooking a central pillar of Africa’s energy transition.

The AfDB, in a statement on Friday, said it made the call on Tuesday during the high-level heads-of-state event on clean cooking in Africa at the 81st United Nations General Assembly in New York, United States.

“The African Development Bank Group has called for clean cooking to be treated as a development imperative and a collective responsibility, urging governments and partners to place it at the heart of Africa’s energy transition,” the AfDB said.

The AfFB expressed worry that nearly one billion Africans lack access to clean cooking, forcing many households to rely on wood, charcoal and other traditional biomass fuels that contribute to indoor air pollution, deforestation and lost productivity. 

The regional financial body lamented that women and children, who are hugely affected, bear the greatest health risks and spend hours collecting fuel that could otherwise be used for education, work and enterprise.

AfDB Group Senior Vice President, Marie-Laure Akin-Olugbade, who represented the President Sidi Ould Tah, said clean cooking could no longer be treated as a secondary issue in the energy transition. 

“How a family cooks affects health, forests, productivity, gender equality, and the daily lives of millions of women and children in Africa. It is therefore not a marginal issue; it is central to development, climate action and human dignity,” Mrs Olugbade said.

According to her, all 36 National Energy Compacts adopted to date by African countries within the initiative now include clean cooking ambitions, with countries pursuing a range of pathways including improved cookstoves, liquefied petroleum gas, electric cooking, biogas, bioethanol and briquettes.

“Success will not be measured by the dollars we invest, but by the lives we improve. Clean cooking must become a central pillar of Africa’s energy transition — one that demands political leadership, sustained financing and collective action at scale,” she reiterated.

The session saw Ireland pledge €300,000 to support the work of the Clean Cooking Alliance.

Convened by Kenya and Norway, in collaboration with the International Energy Agency, the Clean Cooking Alliance and UN Energy, the meeting marked the first time clean cooking took centre stage in the UN General Assembly’s history.

The event also brought together heads of state, ministers, multilateral development banks, United Nations agencies and other partners to raise political ambition and accelerate progress toward universal access to clean cooking across Africa.

Kenya will host the second summit on clean cooking in Africa in Nairobi in January 2027, where leaders and partners are expected to convert the political momentum generated in New York into concrete investment commitments and implementation plans.