That Africa is a victim of climate change is true – BUT – it is not the only narrative.
Africa is also fully endowed with a bounty of renewable sources of energy and minerals used in clean energy technologies. With the largest young population on earth, our continent has the ancestral knowledge, workforce, ingenuity, and energy to help solve the world’s biggest problem – the climate crisis.
More than 3 billion people lack access to clean cooking facilities, relying instead on fuels like wood, charcoal, coal, and kerosene to cook their food every day.
Cooking this way has led to deforestation in sub-Sahara Africa a climate crisis that has led to challenges such as drought, compounding community suffering, traditional cooking has also led to dangerous levels of smoke exposure, affecting the health of the community with women and children being particularly vulnerable. Lack of access to clean cooking solutions has significant consequences for women and girls in the community. Not only does cooking endanger their health from inhaling toxic smoke, but they may be removed from school because of domestic work like firewood collection and walk ever-greater distances carrying heavy loads due to forest degradation. In conflict settings, women face an increased vulnerability to physical attacks when leaving their communities or refugee camps in search of fuel. Women are not just victims; they are critical cogs to the widespread adoption and use of clean cooking solutions in sub-Sahara Africa with a direct impact on their lives.
According to The International Energy Agency (IEA) lack of access to clean cooking remains acute in Sub-Saharan Africa, where the share of those with access barely increased from 15% in 2015 to 17% in 2020. However, population growth pushed up the number of people without access by 10% to around 940 million in 2020, making sub-Saharan Africa the only region where the number of those without access continues to rise significantly. The reliance of the vast majority of sub-Saharan Africans on gathering or purchasing biomass for cooking, particularly in rural areas, dramatically damages health and impairs productivity. Almost 490 000 premature deaths per year are linked to household air pollution from the lack of access to clean cooking facilities, with women and children being the worst affected. The unsustainable harvesting of fuelwood also contributes to deforestation.
Open-fire cooking causes over 4 million deaths per year, more than human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), malaria, and tuberculosis combined. Conditions like heart disease and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) are directly linked to the toxic smoke inhaled by the billions of people still cooking over biomass fires. These open fires also release significant amounts of Carbon dioxide (CO2) and produce a staggering 25% of global black carbon emissions. This is more than all the world’s cars and trucks combined.
In Kenya more than 21,500 Kenyans die each year from cooking with traditional fuels like charcoal and firewood Kenya Vows to Cut Emissions as Dirty Stoves, Fuels Kill 21,500 a Year (voanews.com).
In a lead to combat climate change, enhance livelihoods, and restore balance to the planet. We are committed to empowering people in Africa to realize their potential and live a dignified and fulfilling life by providing renewable-energy solutions that make renewable-energy access easier, quicker, more affordable, cleaner, and more inclusive.
We are empowering communities and transforming lives through improved clean cookstoves, designed and manufactured locally. Bringing durable, clean, safe, affordable cooking energy to households.
Our strategy is to develop and deploy clean energy alternatives in the bottom of the pyramid households with the potential to expand economic opportunity, improve community well-being, reduce health problems, and contribute to the mitigation of climate change while creating sustainable livelihood opportunities. These households have been using inefficient and unhealthy means to cook, lighting, etc due to a lack of information, finances, and clean alternatives. To begin with, we are aiming to replace all dirty cookstoves with culturally appropriate innovative clean cookstoves that reduce or eliminate black carbon emissions and prevent illness and death from air pollution for people at the base of the pyramid in sub-Saharan Africa. Clean cooking is a nature-based solution, a technology-based solution, a community-based solution, and an opportunity for climate justice.
At KiotaSIC we design, evaluate, model, develop & build cleaner, safer, low emissions, and distribute higher quality, higher efficiency, low cost, accessible top performing improved clean cookstoves and clean energy products for use in Sub-Saharan Africa.
At Kiota Social Innovation Center (KiotaSIC) we are committed to innovating smart clean and renewable energy products and services that improve the lives of people in Africa. Using a market-based approach, and partnership with communities KiotaSIC will continue developing a product line of clean energy products charcoal, wood clean cookstoves, solar power, LPG, biogas, gasifier stoves, and fuel pellets, that cook faster while reducing fuel use, smoke, and toxic emissions. Our strategy is to develop and deploy clean energy alternatives in the bottom of the pyramid households while creating sustainable livelihood opportunities. Our strategy is to serve more than 15 million people in energy poverty in the next 10 years. KiotaSIC’s safe and clean cookstoves reduce climate change through the reduction of particulate matter and carbon monoxide, create new jobs, and enable families to save money while affording efficient clean cooking. We are keen on the productive use of renewable energy to increase productivity, strengthen local businesses, create jobs, expand economic opportunities, and spur long-term development in rural communities.
The strategy includes a focus on overcoming barriers, such as inadequate financing for climate solutions work in Africa, limited access to sustainable energy innovations, and a lack of integrated energy planning toward the transition to a low-carbon, sustainable energy pathway that meets local aspirations for improved, sustainable livelihoods and avoids greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change in Africa.
Kiota Social Innovation Center is a member of The African Carbon Markets Initiative (ACMI) project developer. Launched at COP27 in partnership with The Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP), Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL), and United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA).
