Ghana’s 2nd Lady, Hajia Samira Bawumia, on Tuesday, May 14, highlighted the strides Ghana has made in clean cooking solutions in Africa at a global summit.

With the theme “Making 2024 a Turning Point for Clean Cooking in Africa”, the summit builds on existing initiatives, including Tanzania's Africa Women Clean Cooking Support Programme launched at COP28 to provide access to clean cooking for women.

The wife of Ghana’s Vice President joined a panel at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris for the summit, where she spoke about Ghana’s progress in pursuing clean cooking solutions.

“In Ghana, we have about 40% access to clean cooking. And out of that, 40% in the urban areas constitutes 45% LPG access, and unfortunately in the rural areas, it’s about 8%.

She added that as part of efforts to improve on this, several measures have been rolled out by the government including the Cylinder Recirculation Model (CRM) to increase penetration by 70% by the year 2030 and increase the rural numbers to 50%.

She said at 40%, Ghana is the highest in West Africa and third highest in sub-Saharan Africa.

The CRM is a distribution system which allows consumers to bring empty cylinders to an agreed point in exchange for a filled cylinder, whilst the empty bottle is transported to a bottling plant to be refilled and returned to the exchange point for pick up by other consumers.

The project is aimed at reducing accidents which commonly happen at gas filling points in communal and residential areas, particularly during the filling or discharging of the gas. The CRM is thus an attempt to relocate gas filling points from residential areas to ensure the safety of businesses, property and human life.

Studies have shown that LPG is a more convenient, faster, safer and better fuel source for household cooking compared with dirty biomass fuels like Charcoal and firewood.

The 2nd Lady said the government of Ghana had engaged in several partnerships all aimed at achieving the national target set for clean cooking solutions.

“We have established two test labs for cookstoves and clean cooking fuels with the support of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Clean Cooking Alliance. Ghana also has adopted three ISO Clean cookstoves and clean cooking standards as well as the National Clean Cooking Strategy and Investment Prospectus which is done with the support of the World Bank.

Hajia Bawumia noted that it was important for a conversation to be had on affordability which is at the heart of the adoption of these clean cooking solutions.

She called on the global community and individual countries to honour their commitments to the clean cooking solutions agenda in Africa.

“The commitments must be honoured and finally let us treat this subject as an urgent matter because it is urgent and we need to act now” she concluded.

The summit was co-chaired by H.E. Samia Suluhu Hassan, President of the United Republic of Tanzania; H.E. Jonas Gahr Støre, Prime Minister of Norway; Dr Fatih Birol, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency; and Dr Akinwumi A. Adesina, President of the African Development Bank Group.

The summit sought to elevate clean cooking on the global agenda and mobilise a broader coalition of support for this critical issue.

It was also meant to mobilise financial commitments for clean cooking from governments, development agencies, development banks, climate funds, the private sector, philanthropies and non-governmental organisations, as well as develop a roadmap of concrete, action-oriented strategies around financing, carbon markets, policies and partnerships that will help better mobilise additional support to scale successful clean cooking efforts.