Bold claim: Kenya will spearhead a pivotal shift toward clean cooking across Africa by hosting a major summit in 2026, signaling a turning point in how the continent approaches household energy and health. And this is the part most people miss: the momentum built here could reshape development, gender equality, and climate outcomes for millions.
Kenya is set to host the second International Clean Cooking Summit in Africa in 2026, with co-organization from Norway, the United States, and the International Energy Agency (IEA). The venue will be Nairobi, where governments, private sector players, and development institutions will converge to accelerate access to clean cooking solutions for nearly 1 billion Africans who still lack them.
The summit will be jointly chaired by Kenyan President William Ruto, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, and IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol, underscoring high-level political and technical commitment.
This event follows the inaugural Clean Cooking Summit in Africa held in Paris in May 2024. That meeting, co-chaired by Tanzania, Norway, the African Development Bank, and the IEA, brought together nearly 60 countries and more than 1,000 delegates and generated a record $2.2 billion in public and private commitments for the sector.
An IEA update published in July 2025 reported that over $470 million of the Paris commitments had already been disbursed. The update also laid out a roadmap toward universal access to clean cooking in sub-Saharan Africa by 2040, assuming technically available and economically viable solutions are deployed.
Despite progress globally, sub-Saharan Africa still faces a steep challenge: since 2010, the number of people without clean cooking access has declined worldwide, but in this region the count remains stubbornly high, with four in five households relying on polluting fuels. The consequences are broad—adverse health effects, gender inequities, hindered economic development, and environmental harm.
By selecting Nairobi as the 2026 host, Kenya positions itself at the heart of Africa’s emerging clean-cooking agenda, at a moment when major powers and international organizations are increasingly prioritizing energy access as a core development and climate issue.
Abdoullah Diop
