Introduction
Cooking in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) provides a strategic entry point towards catalysing the adoption of clean, affordable, and sustainable energy in line with SDG 7. Residential energy consumption makes up the dominate share of energy use in SSA and for most poorer households, cooking is their primary energy need (IEA, 2020). Globally, 4 billion people lack access to modern energy cooking services (ESMAP, 2020). More than 95% of these people either reside in Sub-Saharan African (SSA) or developing countries in Asia, and 84% are of these are in rural areas (ESMAP, 2020). In SSA specifically, over 70% of the population still depends on biomass energy for cooking (ESMAP, 2020), with most of the fuels being burned in inefficient cook stoves, which in turn affects the health and wellbeing of the population through indoor air pollution. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) Household, Air Pollution (HAP) is a significant driver of premature death in Africa. For instance, in the East Africa region, poor indoor air quality is the second most important environmental driver of premature deaths after water contamination.
Kenya is one of the many SSA countries facing substantial clean cooking challenges. The majority of the population (81%) still relies on polluting fuels such as firewood (65%), charcoal (10%), and kerosene (6%) for their cooking needs (GoK, 2019). This has led to an array of interlinked development challenges: GoK (2019) estimates that in Kenya, 21,560 deaths/yr are caused by household in-door air pollution; 8-11Mton/yr. woody biomass is lost due to forest degradation, and 13.6 MtCO2e/yr is emitted. Women and girls are disproportionately affected, with greater exposure to cooking smoke, as well as the drudgery of collecting fuel and lighting/tending fires, which results in missed educational and economic opportunities….