- New Clean Cooking Accelerator Initiative launched at IEA 2026 Ministerial to expand prosperity in Africa, where 1 billion people rely on traditional fuels such as wood and charcoal
- Initiative seeks to scale access to cleaner, healthier cooking methods by strengthening supply chains, investing in infrastructure
PARIS, Feb. 18, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — As part of the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) 2026 Ministerial, The Rockefeller Foundation, Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet Inc., Clean Cooking Alliance, and Energy Corps launched the “Clean Cooking Accelerator Initiative.” Designed to expand access to modern cooking technologies in Africa, it was announced during the High-Level Dialogue on Advancing Energy Access and Cooking Solutions, which was chaired by H.E. Sophie Hermans, Deputy Prime Minister, Netherlands, and Dr. Fatih Birol, IEA Executive Director, and featured opening remarks from H.E. Opiyo Wandayi, Kenya’s Minister of Energy and Petroleum, The Hon. Chris Wright, U.S. Secretary of Energy, and H.E. Terje Lien Aasland, Norway’s Minister of Energy. The Clean Cooking Accelerator Initiative reflects the organizations’ renewed commitment to achieving universal access to clean cooking in Africa, while helping to improve health, save lives, empower women and children, create local jobs and build economic opportunity, and reduce forest degradation across the continent.
Approximately one billion people in Africa rely on traditional fuels such as wood and charcoal. These fuels and appliances significantly increase household air pollution for families—especially women and children—and the associated health risks, such as respiratory illnesses. In addition to causing more than 810,000 premature deaths every year in Africa, the IEA, which also identified clean cooking as a defining challenge for Africa’s prosperity, estimates that closing the global clean cooking gap requires more than $2 billion per year. While significant progress has been made in expanding access to clean cooking in parts of the world, this progress has been uneven. In Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, population growth has outpaced gains in access, and the gap continues to widen by an estimated 14 million people per year as the number of those without clean cooking solutions increases.
Clean Cooking Accelerator Initiative:
Clean cooking solutions, including electric, biogas, bioethanol, liquid petroleum gas (LPG) and efficient biomass stoves, produce far fewer harmful particles compared to wood or charcoal. Rapidly increasing access to clean cooking is also an integral component of Mission 300, an initiative led by the World Bank and African Development Bank – with support from The Rockefeller Foundation, Global Energy Alliance, Sustainable Energy for All, and others – to provide 300 million Africans with electricity by 2030.
Starting in approximately half a dozen countries (to be announced in the coming months), the Clean Cooking Accelerator Initiative aims to expand to additional Sub-Saharan African countries that request support and demonstrate readiness and momentum toward universal access in Africa to clean cooking. The overarching goal is to improve health, save lives, empower women and children, reduce forest degradation, create local jobs, and build economic opportunity across the continent.
The Clean Cooking Accelerator Initiative seeks to get cleaner cooking methods to more people by coordinating technical expertise, catalytic capital, and implementation support. While each participating organization is already pursuing efforts to advance clean cooking, the Clean Cooking Accelerator Initiative will bring the organizations together around certain efforts and allow for information sharing to maximize collective impact. Working in countries that express interest and demonstrated readiness, the Initiative will support efforts to strengthen supply chains and invest in infrastructure to scale modern cooking solutions. This includes, but is not limited to the following:
Clean Cooking Fellows
- In select markets, The Rockefeller Foundation (through its Mission 300 Accelerator housed within RF Catalytic Capital, its charitable spin-off) and Energy Corps are providing support to CoAction Global to develop a cohort of Clean Cooking Fellows to strengthen institutional capacity and develop investable project pipelines. CoAction Global, an independent nonprofit impact accelerator facilitating innovation and investment in especially hard-to-reach places, also manages the Mission 300 Fellowship program.
“The Rockefeller Foundation and its Mission 300 Accelerator are thrilled to be working with these organizations to take on an incredible development opportunity: expanding access to clean, modern cooking methods. There are smart, easy solutions that can prevent hundreds of thousands of people needlessly dying from indoor air pollution each year, and we are excited to try to drive investment into solving this problem,” said Andrew Herscowitz, CEO of the Mission 300 Accelerator, RF Catalytic Capital, Inc.
- Building capacity to deliver clean cooking solutions at scale, the Clean Cooking Fellows will receive structured training, analytical tools, and ongoing technical support from the Clean Cooking Alliance, which will serve as a lead technical delivery partner supporting country-level capacity building.
“We’re seeing real momentum behind clean cooking across Africa, but momentum alone doesn’t deliver solutions to households, schools and institutions. What matters now is building the capacity, partnerships, and market foundations that allow countries to move from targets to implementation. This collaboration is an important step in making that shift possible,” said Dymphna van der Lans, CEO of the Clean Cooking Alliance.
Capacity Building and Busting through Bottlenecks
- As a nonprofit working to end energy poverty by connecting local leadership with global energy expertise, philanthropy, and NGO organization, Energy Corps will channel philanthropic capital to mobilize private-sector investment and industrial capacity. This support will strengthen capacity building and investment in bankable projects to address supply-chain and infrastructure bottlenecks.
“Clean cooking is a fast way to deliver dignity, health, and economic opportunity—at massive scale. This Initiative is built to turn commitment into real projects, real infrastructure, and real access by mobilizing more capital,” said Toby Rice, CEO and Founder of Energy Corps
Mission 300 National Energy Compacts
- Complementing these efforts, the Mission 300 Accelerator is also collaborating with the Global Energy Alliance to advance clean cooking through Mission 300 National Energy Compacts. Together, they will deploy catalytic capital and targeted technical assistance to strengthen in-country delivery capacity through specialized Compact Delivery and Monitoring Units (CDMUs), including dedicated personnel to support implementation of clean cooking priorities and expand access for vulnerable communities.
“The Global Energy Alliance has seen firsthand how electric cooking can transform lives, already reaching over 26,000 people in Kenya and Uganda through our Productive Use Financing Facility (PUFF),” said Woochong Um, CEO of the Global Energy Alliance. “As a founding member of the Global Electric Cooking Coalition, we are committed to scaling these solutions continent-wide, coordinating with governments to support CDMUs that provide critical, long-term planning and delivery capacity. The Clean Cooking Accelerator Initiative supercharges this momentum, aligning with Mission 300 to build resilient energy systems and empower communities through local, expert-led implementation.”
The Clean Cooking Accelerator Initiative will also be outcome-oriented, focused on measurable improvements in country readiness, market conditions, and the development of robust, investment-ready pipelines, and progress will be measured by tangible movement across two fronts: achievement of key market-enabling milestones that unlock private investment, and advancement of concrete, bankable projects. The Initiative will operate through a two-phased approach:
- Improve National Capacity. The Rockefeller Foundation’s Mission 300 Accelerator and Energy Corps will provide approximately $850,000 of grant capital to CoAction Global—nearly $600,000 from RF Catalytic Capital and $250,000 from the Energy Corps—for the placement of Clean Cooking Fellows. These Fellows will help improve national capacity to promote project development and investment readiness, sustain momentum, and crowd in capital into clean cooking solutions. Fellows will receive training, analytical support, and curated tools from the Clean Cooking Alliance, supported by another $250,000 grant from Energy Corps.
- Mobilize Investment & Scale Delivery. Participating organizations will coordinate with relevant stakeholders to align resources around project pipelines, fast-track priority projects toward bankability, expand fuel, appliance, and distribution supply chains, build enabling infrastructure to support growing household, institutional, and commercial demand, and advance flagship investment vehicles to support scale.
In addition, the Clean Cooking Accelerator Initiative provides clear entry points for additional stakeholders to align their efforts to expand clean cooking access, including:
- African governments that may request Clean Cooking Fellows or related technical assistance as part of Mission 300 implementation.
- Bilateral and multilateral institutions, and philanthropies that may sponsor clean cooking delivery units, technical assistance, or project preparation.
- Private companies that may invest in projects, as well as provide support for regulatory reform, capacity building, infrastructure development, and project execution aligned with commercial investment opportunities.
High-Level Dialogue on Advancing Energy Access and Cooking Solutions:
The Initiative was announced during the High-Level Dialogue on Advancing Energy Access and Cooking Solutions at the IEA’s 2026 Ministerial. The dialogue highlighted progress since the 2024 Summit on Clean Cooking in Africa, and approaches that have accelerated impact. It also provided a platform for participants to announce new initiatives to advance energy access in the lead up to the second Summit on Clean Cooking in Africa, taking place in Nairobi from July 9-10, 2026 and co-chaired by Kenya, Norway, the United States, and the IEA. Drawing on over two decades of leadership in global energy-access tracking, the IEA highlighted its analytical leadership and convening power to elevate clean cooking on the global agenda and to support consistent tracking of outcomes across initiatives, including the new Clean Cooking Accelerator Initiative.
About Clean Cooking Alliance
The Clean Cooking Alliance (CCA) stewards the global clean cooking agenda. CCA is the sole organization with the explicit mandate to operate at a national and global scale to enable market-based approaches for clean cooking. CCA works through a worldwide network of partners to ensure that no one’s life is limited by how they cook. For additional information, please visit https://cleancooking.org, subscribe to our newsletter at https://cleancooking.org/newsletter, and follow us on LinkedIn @cleancookingalliance.
About Energy Corps
Energy Corps is a U.S.-based nonprofit organization accelerating access to affordable, reliable energy worldwide. Energy Corps advances modern energy at scale by unlocking policy bottlenecks, mobilizing large-scale finance, and creating durable demand — helping move communities from energy poverty to energy prosperity. Learn more at energycorps.com.
About the Global Energy Alliance
The Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet Inc. (‘Global Energy Alliance’) builds transformative public, private, philanthropic partnerships to end energy poverty and accelerate green economic opportunity. Founded in 2021 by The Rockefeller Foundation, IKEA Foundation and Bezos Earth Fund, we work to unlock finance, strengthen institutions and transform markets, delivering progress that goes beyond individual projects to drive lasting systems change. Through our two interconnected global pillars, Grids of the Future – focused on innovation and infrastructure – and Energy and Opportunity – with a focus on jobs and livelihoods – we work toward our vision: a world where everyone has access to affordable, reliable, clean electricity and the means to use it to improve their lives.
With work in more than 30 countries across Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, our alliance aims to reach 1 billion people with clean electricity, prevent 4 billion tons of carbon emissions and create or improve 150 million jobs. For more information, please visit www.energyalliance.org and follow us on X at @EnergyAlliance.
About The Rockefeller Foundation
Investing $30 billion over the last 113 years to promote the well-being of humanity, The Rockefeller Foundation is a pioneering philanthropy built on unlikely partnerships and innovative solutions that deliver measurable results for people in the United States and around the world. We leverage scientific breakthroughs, artificial intelligence, and new technologies to make big bets across energy, food, health, and finance, including in association with our public charity, RF Catalytic Capital (RFCC). For more information, sign up for our newsletter at www.rockefellerfoundation.org/subscribe and follow us on X @RockefellerFdn, Instagram @rockefellerfdn, YouTube @RockefellerFdn, and LinkedIn @the-rockefeller-foundation.
About CoAction Global
CoAction Global is an independent nonprofit impact accelerator providing a vital link between people and places to generate economic prosperity in some of the world’s most challenging contexts. As an operational catalyst, the organization connects local leadership and ideas with global capabilities to advance economic opportunity, drive community investment, and convene partnerships that propel sustainability, innovation and empowerment. For more information, please visit coactionglobal.org and follow us on LinkedIn @coaction-global-org.
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