500,000 African girls die yearly as a consequence of lack of fresh cooking

No fewer than 500,000 African women die prematurely each year from cooking with firewood, charcoal or stove, the International Energy Agency has said.

The IEA said African women and their children lose their lives due to lack of access to clean cooking.

In a documentary released on Friday, the energy agency disclosed that there are about 760 million people in the world who are still lacking access to electricity.

It stated that 2.3 billion people still rely on what it called “primitive sources of energy” to cover their cooking needs, saying Africa is one of the regions that is most affected by the issue.

“Women and children are being disproportionately impacted by the lack of energy access, particularly to clean cooking.

“It is estimated that 500,000 women die prematurely every year in Africa due to the lack of access to clean cooking.

“Women can spend up to four hours a day, just collecting the firewood, robbing them of their time and preventing their educational and professional aspirations,” the documentary revealed.

The IEA expressed surprise that Africa needs only $4bn annually to bridge the energy gap between now and 2030, an amount it said Europe spends on drinking coffee per week.

“So, most surprisingly, the amount of investment needed to bridge this access gap for clean cooking in Africa is only $4bn annually from now till 2030.

“To put the number in a context, that is the same amount that we spend in Europe drinking coffee a week,” the IEA said.

In a report commemorating International Women’s Day, the agency noted that more than 1.5 billion people have gained access to clean and modern cooking fuels around the world, including biofuels and electricity, among others, since 2010.

“Yet today, at a time of growing economic disparity, more than one in every three women have no choice but to cook over smoky, toxic fires fuelled by wood, charcoal, and kerosene to prepare meals for themselves and their families.

“The smoke emitted from cooking over open fires and inefficient stoves produces serious health and climate harming emissions that lead to more than four million premature deaths each year.

“The burden of this health crisis falls on women and children, and in Africa, it is the second leading cause of premature deaths in this demographic. The time for change on this issue is long overdue,” the report emphasised.

While calling on African leaders to address the issue of polluting cooking fuels, the IEA stated that it will collaborate with the African Development Bank on May 14 to host a high-level Summit on Clean Cooking in Africa.

The summit, supported by the Clean Cooking Alliance, is to “dramatically accelerate commitments on finance, policy, and collaboration efforts to tackle the troubling lack of clean cooking deployment.”