Inaugural Africa Clean Cooking Summit Held in Paris

May 17, 2024

The first Summit on Clean Cooking, which took place in Paris on May 14, 2024, was a turning point in the fight against the serious health and environmental problems in Africa that are caused by traditional cooking methods. Over 1,000 delegates from almost 60 countries came to the meeting, which is the main goal was to bring about change across the continent, where people still cook with biomass like wood and charcoal.

The Challenge of Traditional Cooking Methods

There are more than a billion people in Africa who cook every day with traditional fuels like wood and charcoal. This poses a big health risk, especially for women and children who are close to the smoke from these fuels and are more likely to get respiratory illnesses. The World Health Organization says that these kinds of cooking techniques pollute the air in homes and kill 3.2 million people every year. Africa is especially affected.

Economic and Environmental Impact

The effects on health have big economic costs, with about $700 billion in costs just in Africa each year. The global costs are expected to be $1.4 trillion. Also, these ancient ways of cooking cause a lot of trees to be cut down and a lot of greenhouse gases to be released into the air, which makes climate change worse and causes species to disappear.

Global and Regional Commitments

At the end of the summit, strong financial promises worth more than $2.2 billion were made to help Africa switch to clean cooking ways. Norway’s $50 million promise and the EU’s $431 million promise were two of the most important ones. The African Development Bank made a big change in how it gives money: it will now put 20% of its energy loans in Africa toward clean cooking solutions. This will save the continent $2 billion over the next ten years.

More About Summit on Clean Cooking in Africa

The goal of the Summit on Clean Cooking in Africa is to deal with the major health and environmental issues that traditional cooking methods cause.
More than 900 million people in Africa cook with firewood.
The meeting pushes for environmentally friendly fuels and cooking technologies to cut down on pollution and tree cutting.
It is an important place for companies, NGOs, and governments to work together.
The event showcases new technologies like solar and biogas stoves and helps set up ways for people to get money to make clean cooking possible.
To reach the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, this project is very important.

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