From Kitchen to Catalyst: Clean Cooking as a Growth Engine for People and Planet

AfroClimate supports locally driven initiatives that strengthen community resilience, restore ecosystems, and promote sustainable livelihoods across Africa. Our current programs focus on Nature-Based Solutions and Climate Adaptation & Mitigation, demonstrating how environmental restoration and innovation can work hand in hand to build a more sustainable future. Part 2 – clean energy for shared prosperity across Africa.

AfroClimate CEO Nassima Sadar-Gravier with INDRI and MCCI partners at the signing of a tripartite agreement in Madagascar.

Across Africa, the future of climate action is being shaped not only in policy rooms or global summits, but in kitchens. Clean cooking, often overlooked, sits at the intersection of climate mitigation, public health, gender equity, and economic development. At AfroClimate, we see clean cooking not as a standalone intervention, but as a powerful economic sector; one that can generate jobs, protect ecosystems, and unlock climate finance when designed and scaled the right way.

This belief is guiding AfroClimate’s growing leadership in the clean cooking space, most recently through a landmark partnership in Madagascar, and reinforced by community-led implementation in Nigeria.

A Strategic Partnership in Madagascar

In December 2025, AfroClimate formalized a strategic three-way partnership with the Madagascar Clean Cooking Initiative (MCCI) and INDRI during the “Madagascar: Gambling on Development” conference. The Memorandum of Understanding was signed in the presence of government leaders, entrepreneurs, and development partners committed to Madagascar’s refoundation; signaling a shared belief that ecological transformation can and must be a pathway to inclusive prosperity.

The challenge is stark. Nearly 90% of households in Madagascar still rely on traditional biomass, firewood and charcoal, for daily cooking. This dependence accelerates deforestation, exposes families to harmful indoor air pollution, and constrains productivity, particularly for women and children. Yet embedded in this challenge is a significant opportunity: the chance to build a nationally anchored clean cooking sector that improves lives while contributing to Madagascar’s climate and development goals. As a Malagasy proverb reminds us, “Ny tany tsy mba lavitra, fa izay aleha no sarotra” — the land is not far; it is the path to it that we must build together. This insight captures the essence of the clean cooking transition: the solutions are within reach, but progress depends on collective effort, coordinated systems, and sustained investment.

AfroClimate, MCCI, and INDRI are aligning around this opportunity with a clear ambition; to transform clean cooking from a fragmented set of projects into a coherent, investable ecosystem.

What the Collaboration Is Building

The partnership focuses on strengthening the entire clean cooking value chain, from production to household adoption, through coordinated action:

• Scaling affordable, durable, and locally produced clean cooking solutions that meet real household needs.

• Mobilizing climate finance and accessing carbon markets, ensuring long-term sustainability for local enterprises.

• Launching the MCCI Quality Label, enabling consumers to identify trusted, certified products.

• Building technical, entrepreneurial, and financial capacity across manufacturers, distributors, and entrepreneurs.

• Ensuring data transparency, from production through distribution, to support accountability and impact tracking.

• Aligning clean cooking growth with Madagascar’s national climate and development priorities.

  
  

Each institution brings a distinct and complementary strengths. MCCI anchors ecosystem coordination and local engagement; INDRI contributes research and technical rigor to inform policy and innovation; and AfroClimate provides climate finance expertise, incubation support, and carbon market access to help locally rooted solutions scale responsibly.

At its core, this collaboration reflects AfroClimate’s belief that climate solutions must be locally rooted, economically viable and nationally aligned if they are to yield meaningful change.

From Policy to Practice: Lessons from Nigeria

AfroClimate and PowerStove partner with Agouwa community to advance clean cooking solutions in Enugu State, Nigeria.

While Madagascar is a cornerstone of AfroClimate’s clean cooking strategy, our work across Africa demonstrates how these principles translate on the ground. In Enugu State, Nigeria, AfroClimate supports a community-led clean cooking initiative in partnership with PowerStove Energy, showing what happens when innovation meets lived experience.

In the Agouwa community, local leadership is driving the adoption of smart, smoke-free cookstoves that reduce household costs, protect surrounding forests, and dramatically improve indoor air quality. For PowerStove’s CEO, Okey Esse, the mission is deeply personal; rooted in the loss of his mother to indoor air pollution. That lived experience has shaped an innovation designed around dignity, safety, and affordability.

With AfroClimate’s support, the initiative has already delivered clean cookstoves to households and is scaling toward broader impact across Enugu State. Early results point to substantial household savings, thousands of trees protected, and measurable health benefits - while aligning with Nigeria’s Energy Transition Plan and key Sustainable Development Goals. It’s expected that participating households in Nigeria will save nearly $75,000 annually, protecting over 3,000 trees, and improving the health of more than 1,200 community members.

More than the numbers, however, the project illustrates a central lesson: when communities lead, climate solutions become personal, trusted, and lasting. As the Igbo proverb says, “Onye kwe, chi ya ekwe” - when people commit, their destiny commits with them. In Enugu, community ownership has turned clean cooking from an external intervention into a shared endeavor, rooted in trust, responsibility, and collective progress.

AfroClimate’s Role in the Clean Cooking Transition

Across contexts, AfroClimate occupies a distinctive position in the clean cooking space. We work at the intersection of community leadership, climate finance, policy alignment, and market development. Whether formalizing national partnerships, supporting grassroots entrepreneurs, or unlocking carbon finance, our role is to connect ambition with execution - and local solutions with scalable pathways.

Clean cooking is not simply about changing how food is prepared. It is about healthier families, protected ecosystems, economic freedom, and restored dignity. It is about proving that climate action can improve everyday life while building resilient economies.

From Madagascar to Nigeria, AfroClimate is advancing clean cooking as a pathway to healthier lives, resilient ecosystems, and shared prosperity across Africa.