By Ruth Akiiki Komuntale,
Managing Director, ECOCA East Africa
LinkedIn
In the developing world, clean cooking has long been treated as an afterthought, tucked under energy access, ignored in climate finance, and often dismissed as too “local” to be scalable. But here’s the truth: cooking is killing us. And unless we change how we power the most basic human activity – preparing food – we will not meet our global health, climate or development goals.
Across Africa, more than 900 million people still rely on charcoal, firewood or animal waste to cook. That’s not just inconvenient. It can be deadly. According to the World Bank, this dependence leads to around 490 000 premature deaths annually, primarily among women and children. Smoke from indoor cooking fires can silently choke families – causing respiratory disease, eye damage and heart conditions.
The economic toll is just as severe. African countries lose an estimated USD 37 billion every year due to healthcare costs, reduced productivity and environmental degradation tied to traditional cooking. And the gap is only growing.
We must abandon the myth that clean cooking is a “small” issue. There is nothing small about hundreds of thousands of deaths per year. There is nothing minor about USD 37 billion in economic losses.
The invisible architecture of change
Change is possible. The International Energy Agency’s 2025 report, Universal Access to Clean Cooking in Africa, shows that the continent can reach universal clean cooking access by 2040 – if we act now. The technologies already exist: solar-electric cooking systems, liquefied petroleum gas, biogas, improved biomass stoves, and electric pressure cookers. What’s missing is scale – and structure.
At ECOCA East Africa, where I serve as Managing Director, we provide domestic and institutional solar-powered electric cooking systems to off-grid and underserved communities. Our domestic ECOCAs (e-cookers) are complete solar-electric systems that include solar panels, a solar generator, cooking pots, LED lights, USB ports and backup batteries. They enable off-grid families of five to seven people to cook three meals a day, light their homes and charge small devices such as mobile phones. These systems reduce indoor air pollution, eliminate the need for firewood collection, and allow women and girls to spend more time in school, at work, or simply at rest.
Our solar-electric institutional kitchens allow schools and other off-grid institutions to cook their meals with 100 % solar electricity, while also providing safe drinking water and reliable power for computers and laboratories. For institutions connected to the grid, ECOCA grid kitchens use highly efficient cookers to serve meals to hundreds or even thousands of people, freeing up precious resources that can be reinvested in institutional growth and staff development.
But technology alone won’t deliver change. Turning innovation into real impact takes standards. International Standards are the invisible architecture that makes public investment possible, attracts private capital and protects the end user. For clean cooking, standards mean trust. They mean scale. And, ultimately, they mean survival.
Across Africa, more than 900 million people still rely on charcoal, firewood or animal waste to cook.
Where standards become lifelines
This October, I’ll be speaking at the ISO Annual Meeting 2025 in Kigali, Rwanda, as part of the session “The business of impact: Turning needs into opportunities”. It focuses on how International Standards can serve not just industry, but people, communities and society at large.
Standards can often feel abstract. But in the clean cooking world, they’re the difference between a product that saves lives and one that malfunctions and burns a home down. They determine what governments fund, what development agencies support, and what manufacturers bring to market.
In places like Uganda, where ECOCA operates, clean cooking is still seen as a luxury by many. We must turn it into the baseline. That’s only possible when international cooperation, as seen in ISO, supports standards that ensure quality and affordability, so people can adopt clean technologies without fear or financial strain.
Not just a cooking issue
We can’t talk about cooking without talking about climate change. Deforestation from wood harvesting, emissions from charcoal production and methane from biomass burning all contribute significantly to global warming. That’s why protecting forests and reducing household emissions are two of the fastest, most affordable ways to cut carbon.
Too often, clean cooking is framed as a “women’s issue”. Yes, women and girls carry the burden of smoke exposure and hours lost to fuel collection. But that doesn’t make it their responsibility alone. This transition must be inclusive, engaging both men and women. At ECOCA, we’ve seen first-hand how involving men at both household and institutional levels creates more sustainable adoption and behavioural change.
From margins to mainstream
The clean cooking sector is finally gaining momentum. Major investors, including development banks and climate funds, are waking up to the transformative power of cooking solutions. But the path to universal access still requires political will, international cooperation and scalable partnerships. Above all, it requires standards that enable alignment, trust and quality across markets.
We must move clean cooking from the margins of policy and business planning to the centre of global development strategies. Because when we invest in clean cooking, we don’t just light up stoves – we ignite possibilities in households, communities, and ultimately across the world.
And we prove, once and for all, that even the most basic human acts – like making a meal – deserve the dignity of safety, equity, convenience, and sustainability.