Nairobi, Kenya, 27 March 2026 – Today, at the Kenya International Investment Conference (KIICO) in Nairobi, the Government of Makueni County and CLASP, as a co-implementer of Modern Energy Cooking Services (MECS) programme, signed a Memorandum of Understanding to accelerate clean cooking transitions across public institutions in Makueni County. The ceremony was witnessed by H.E. Prof. Kithure Kindiki, EGH, Deputy President of the Republic of Kenya. The signing coincides with the launch of Kenya’s first Institutional Clean Cooking Sector Pack, which identifies a KES 72 billion ($559M) investment opportunity to transition over 100,000 institutions serving 12.6 million people to modern clean cooking solutions—framing institutional clean cooking not as a development challenge, but as a compelling, bankable investment opportunity.

A partnership rooted in national commitment and investment ambition

Despite Kenya’s remarkable strides in electricity access—from 20% to 75% of the population in the last decade—clean cooking remains one of the last major frontiers of the energy transition. Many in Kenya still rely on traditional fuels, such as charcoal and firewood, which contribute to deforestation, generate harmful indoor air pollution, and divert billions of shillings annually from institutions and households toward inefficient fuel expenditure. Kenya’s National Cooking Transition Strategy (KNCTS 2024–2028) sets a clear national target of universal access to clean cooking by 2030, operationalizing the National Energy Policy and mobilizing government, private sector, and development partners toward a coordinated, multi-fuel transition. This partnership between the Government of Makueni County and CLASP takes a major step in translating the national framework into county-level action, with a clear investment case to match.

Nyamolo Abagi, Director of Clean Energy Access at CLASP and CLASP/MECS programme lead, emphasizes the impact this partnership will have on lives and livelihoods: “Through the MECS programme, we have spent years building the evidence base and market infrastructure to make clean cooking a real, affordable choice for institutions, households, and commercial settings across the Global South. But this is also, urgently, a story about dignity — about the cooks in institutional kitchens who feed school children and the sick every day, while enduring some of the highest levels of heat stress and indoor air pollution of any workforce on the continent. They deserve better, and better is now within reach.”

Unlocking the institutional cooking opportunity

While global clean cooking efforts have largely focused on households, institutional kitchens represent an equally critical and significantly underserved opportunity. Across sub-Saharan Africa, more than 620,000 schools, nearly 100,000 healthcare facilities, and hundreds of thousands of correctional and vocational training centers prepare meals daily for millions of people, with over 85% still relying on firewood or charcoal. In Kenya alone, there are over 97,000 educational institutions, more than 13,000 healthcare facilities, and over 130 correctional facilities; more than 90% still use biomass for cooking.

Kenya’s newly launched Institutional Clean Cooking Sector Pack — developed by the Office of the Special Envoy for Climate Change (OSECC) in partnership with InvestKenya, with contributions from the Government of Makueni County, CLASP/MECS, and other partners — quantifies this as a KES 72 billion ($559M) investment opportunity and provides the market intelligence to make it bankable.

Over the next five years, CLASP and the Government of Makueni County will jointly identify and prioritize public institutions and communities for electric cooking transitions, working with a growing ecosystem of Kenya-based clean cooking suppliers. Pilot interventions at vocational training centers will draw on innovative local companies, including Ecobora and Feion Green Ventures, two Kenya-based manufacturers supported through the MECS programme, to demonstrate that affordable, high-quality clean cooking solutions are available and ready to scale. The aim is to build a replicable, financially sustainable model that can attract private capital and be replicated across Kenya’s 47 counties to demonstrate that affordable, high-quality clean cooking solutions are available and ready to scale.

Nyamolo Abagi highlights the opportunity this partnership poses: “What makes this partnership with Makueni County so compelling is that all the ingredients are already here: a county government with the will to act, innovative local manufacturers ready to deliver, and a sector pack that turns a long-standing development challenge into a credible investment opportunity. CLASP’s role is to connect those pieces — and to ensure that the communities and institutions we serve are co-creators of the solutions, not just recipients. Makueni is where we prove the model.”

Governor of Makueni County, H.E. Mutula Kilonzo Junior says of the partnership: “Makueni is open for investment — and clean cooking is one of the most compelling opportunities on the table. Our county has already committed KES 157 million to solar energy, launched our County Energy Plan (2023 – 2032), Energy Policy 2025, and piloted clean cooking in our institutions. We know what is possible when the right partners show up. This partnership with MECS and CLASP is about turning that commitment into scale —reducing the fuel costs that drain our institutions, creating skilled jobs for our young people in the clean energy sector.”

A call to investors and partners 

Today’s MOU signing is a signal of implementation intent, but unlocking Kenya’s KES 72 billion institutional clean cooking opportunity at scale will require blended finance approaches that combine public funding, private capital, concessional finance, and carbon markets. CLASP, the Government of Makueni County, and the MECS programme invite investors, development partners, local financial institutions, and technology providers to engage with the Institutional Clean Cooking Sector Pack and explore how their capital and expertise can accelerate this transition.

About Modern Energy Cooking Services programme

Modern Energy Cooking Services (MECS) is an eleven-year programme funded by UK aid via the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office. MECS is a geographically diverse, multicultural and transdisciplinary team working in close partnership with NGOs, governments, private sector, academia and research institutes, policy representatives and communities in 16 countries of interest to accelerate a transition from biomass to genuinely ‘clean’ cooking. CLASP is a core partner of the MECS programme alongside Loughborough University and ESMAP.

About CLASP

CLASP is the leading global authority on efficient appliances’ role in fighting climate change and improving people’s lives. With 25 years of expertise and offices on four continents, CLASP collaborates with policymakers, industry leaders, and other experts to deliver clear pathways to a more sustainable world for people and the planet.

Energy-efficient motor systems could play a key role in driving economic growth and climate progress in Nigeria–a country that strives to reach net zero by 2060 and lift 100 million of its citizens out of poverty. While motor systems pose a significant challenge, through strategic partnerships and committed action, they also offer a significant opportunity for profound change for millions.

Motor systems are essential to most automated processes and are key to the world’s manufacturing, mining, agriculture, and industrial sectors. However, motor systems have a significant emissions impact: today, they account for 27% of global industrial electricity demand. Much of this demand is linked to the fact that low-efficiency, outdated motor systems represent two-thirds of the global motor stock.

In Nigeria, the industrial sector accounts for approximately 22% of electricity consumption. Motors were estimated to consume 83 TWh in 2025—equivalent to annual energy consumption in Belgium.

Energy-efficient motor systems could deliver significant economic development without losing sight of the country’s climate goals, reaching net zero by 2060, and lifting 100 million Nigerians out of poverty.

Energy-efficient motor systems can lower national electricity demand and reduce the need for costly generation, transmission, and distribution investments. When governments and utilities are able to avoid these expenses, that capital becomes available for industry, education, healthcare, and infrastructure, which ultimately helps to drive GDP growth. At a local level, efficient motors can also reduce operational costs for small businesses and smallholder farms. Lower costs translate to improved profitability and could enable job creation in these local settings.

CLASP is currently supporting the Standard Organization of Nigeria (SON) to develop energy-efficiency standards for industrial motor systems. Setting up efficiency policy for motor systems in Nigeria could have significant benefits, including reducing energy use by 300 TWh from 2025 through 2050, avoiding 130 Mt of CO2—the equivalent of Nigeria’s annual CO2 emissions—and saving $3 billion USD through 2050.

John Bature of the Standard Organisation of Nigeria reflected on the partnership, stating:

The ongoing CLASP-supported project has reignited the drive to achieve industrial energy efficiency in Nigeria. The initiative [to develop standards] addresses the identified energy waste arising from the use of obsolete motors across the Nigerian industrial sector. The project will undoubtedly deliver significant climate and economic benefits for Nigeria.

CLASP and SON are also collaborating with the Sustainable Research and Action for Environmental Development (SRADEV) Nigeria and Eng. Achema, two local Nigerian partners who are supporting data collection and analysis, stakeholder engagement, and technical guidance. Jeremiah Ato from SRADEV underscores the importance of this collaboration: “A robust market assessment is foundational to developing efficiency policies for industrial motors in Nigeria.”

Tom Ramsson, CLASP’s technical advisor on motors and industrial products, and Angellah Wekongo, manager, co-led the project with partners at SRADEV and SON. Wekongo views the collaboration as a significant step towards a greener future: “CLASP is supporting the Standards Organization of Nigeria on the first step in their journey to unlock motor system efficiency. We look forward to continuing our collaboration on motor-driven applications like pumps, fans, and air compressors to help Nigerian industry prepare for a low-carbon future.”

Energy-efficient motor systems offer a massive untapped opportunity for people and the planet. Efficient motor systems can deliver significant energy savings and reduce strain on the grid, redirecting electricity and investment to other sectors. Alongside powering economic growth, efficient motors also have major environmental benefits.

The Global Distributors Collective (GDC) is the newest member of the Energy Access Institutions Facility, an initiative led by CLASP to help more people gain access to reliable and affordable energy.

Extensive network and wider reach 

For nearly a decade, GDC has worked with locally owned businesses (or ‘last mile distributors’), globally, to get efficient products like solar-powered lights, clean cookers, and water filters, to underserved homes and communities. By partnering with the Facility, GDC joins a group of like-minded institutions committed to delivering energy access across the continent.

GDC’s impact is significant. Its network includes 300 distributors across more than 60 countries, which collectively reach more than 60 million people with beneficial household products, including essential sustainable energy products. These distributors operate at the ‘last mile’; the elusive final stretch between services and the often rural, low-income or otherwise marginalized people trying to access those services.

Focused scope for meaningful impact 

GDC’s unique selling point is its strong focus on small, locally owned businesses, many of which face a lot of challenges growing or attracting investment. The Collective helps by providing practical training, tools, and support to help these businesses strengthen their operations; making industry knowledge available and more readily accessible; and linking businesses to investment opportunities. Equally important, GDC amplifies the voices of those businesses in decision-making spaces at the global level, where they have traditionally lacked a seat at the table.

The Facility partners with institutions that strengthen off-grid energy markets and help companies succeed and deliver not just electricity, but the skills, tools, and appliances that allow families and businesses to benefit from it. With GDC on board, the coalition is even better positioned to reach more people with solutions that work.

——

About the Energy Access Institutions Facility

The Energy Access Institutions Facility, or “The Facility,” is a joint donor initiative to support and strengthen the institutions that are essential for the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 7, universal access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy by 2030. The Facility is supported by DOEN Foundation, British International Investment, Good Energies Foundation, the Swedish International Development Agency (Sida), and the UK Government via the Transforming Energy Access (TEA) platform and is managed by CLASP.

This material has been funded by UK International Development from the UK Government; however, the views expressed do not necessarily reflect the UK Government’s official policies.

Marina Baur: Globally, there are 666 million people who aren’t connected to the electric grid. More than a billion others are dealing with frequent power outages because their grids are unreliable. A lot of the people in both groups live in sub-Saharan Africa. Can you give us a sense of how the lack of reliable electricity shapes their lived reality?

Emmanuel Aziebor: Well, if you look at the data around electricity access in sub-Saharan Africa, some countries have much better statistics than others. In countries like Ghana and Kenya, over 70% of the population has electricity. But the reality is, if you go to any of these countries, there are still people with no access to even basic electricity. And by that, I mean they’re in darkness for much of the time; their only form of lighting is something like candles and kerosene lanterns. If they’re lucky, maybe they have a solar lamp.

Many of these communities are only about a kilometer away from the nearest grid. This happens mostly as a result of what we can think of as geographical difficulties: Maybe the community is on an island, or maybe the location is very sparsely populated—most of the time, the government only electrifies communities that have at least a few hundred people. This can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, since people leave those areas for the cities in order to get electricity and job opportunities.

So that’s one side of the energy access issue in Africa: Some people just don’t have electricity. Another side is that some people who are connected to the power grid can’t always rely on it when they need it. In countries like Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, you still have a lot of blackouts. These happen in part because the utilities are in so much debt, which affects how efficiently they can operate.

These blackouts don’t only affect people in their personal lives; they also affect businesses. We see this at CLASP. Our team in Nairobi works from home several days a week, but sometimes they have to come to the office anyway because of blackouts where they live. The office is the only place they’re sure they can get the electricity they need to be productive, because the generator in our building is always going to run.

People in all kinds of businesses are affected by electricity problems. Think about agriculture. Even though we have a lot of freshwater resources in Africa, it’s often hard for farmers to irrigate their crops because you need pumps to move that water and many farmers don’t have electricity to power those pumps. And if farmers can’t irrigate their crops, the crops don’t grow as well as they should, which keeps farmers’ incomes low and raises local food prices, which, in turn, impacts food security.

It’s also important to understand that people use energy to indirectly support their incomes. A long time ago, my father retired from the force and moved from the city to the village. That meant carrying all his appliances and everything to the village, where there was no electricity. So he bought a car battery to run this black-and-white TV. My mom started a bakery, and in the evening, people would come there to sit around and watch TV, and then they would buy bread and pastries as well. So that TV set indirectly contributed to my mom’s income. Without it, she would’ve earned less.

Baur: Thanks for that. CLASP believes that a significant percentage of the money devoted to building energy systems needs to be invested in appliances. That’s not a very intuitive idea; why do you think that’s important?

Aziebor: Well, electricity is like water flowing in a river. There are electrons all over the place, but they must be captured into usable form, and what makes that possible is appliances.

Let’s look at this issue from the macro level. Utilities set up generation plants and transmission systems to transfer those electrons to a point of distribution: a pole that is metered, with a wire that goes into a home. Currently, in the energy sector, we measure these poles and say things like, “We have connected 10,000 households to electricity.” But having that connection in your home doesn’t mean you can actually use those electrons. That can only happen through a device that draws that power and turns it into the services you need. That device could be a light bulb or a TV; it could be a fan or an air conditioner.

So the actual benefit of electricity only happens when people have appliances. And that’s actually true for the utility as well. If nobody uses the electrons they generate and transmit, utilities do not make profit. A lot of utilities in Africa are in debt, partly because people aren’t using the electricity that essentially just stops at the metering point.

This is what CLASP focuses on, and it has implications at every level of society. At the individual or household level, appliances can improve quality of life, reduce sicknesses, and improve incomes. For example, in very hot places like West Africa, it’s hard to sleep without an air conditioner or fan, and if you can’t sleep well, your quality of life and productivity suffer.

At the institutional level, if you, say, provide high-quality appliances in health clinics and hospitals, enabling things like reliable refrigeration of vaccines, the provision of healthcare improves. It also becomes more cost-effective because you’re not wasting valuable resources that you then have to buy more of.

And at the small business level, businesses that have appliances will be able to earn more profit. This is very important for economies in sub-Saharan Africa, since small and medium companies make up 95% of registered businesses in the region. Today, many of these businesses are struggling, for a wide variety of reasons. Having better access to devices that turn energy into the services they need could really be a game-changer.

So when you talk about community resilience, appliances play a major role. They help people access better information, higher incomes, and less sickness. Appliances are how we turn energy into opportunities, into comfort, into quality of life.

This is a very important topic in Africa. But for a very long time, it hasn’t really been explained—even to government decisionmakers—from a strategic position.

Baur: What could African governments do to help more people access appliances? What types of interventions should they be thinking about when they decide where to spend money or what solutions to drive forward?

Aziebor: If you speak to African policymakers, the main things they’re concerned about are job creation and economic development. So that’s what we focus on.

Seventy percent of the population in sub-Saharan Africa is under 30, and many of these young people can’t find jobs. If they cannot get opportunities in-country, they move out, and then we see all this risk on the Mediterranean. So how can we encourage African governments to look at appliance access as a solution to that problem?

Basically, we say that one way to resolve issues around youth unemployment and economic development is to utilize the abundance of energy that is available. A lot of countries have installed grid capacity that is not being utilized. Well, what if we used that capacity to support rural enterprises? About 60% of the labor force in sub-Saharan Africa works in agriculture. So there are major opportunities there, and we already have a good idea of where interventions would do the most good. Most countries are mapped out into places where there is agricultural productivity, places where you can have agricultural processing. So we could say, “Okay, we know this area is good for rice production. Let’s get some irrigation systems into that area to produce more rice and get the youth involved in this business.” Then, we could encourage rice processing, which adds value—we can provide rice mills to help people get into that business. And then those workers would earn money that can be invested back into their businesses. So with appliances, governments can use energy to catalyze rural economic development.

Another thing governments can do is introduce regulations to make appliances run more efficiently and eventually lead to lower consumption of energy. This may seem like a contradiction: If utilities need people to use more energy in order to be profitable, why would governments want appliances to use less energy? Well, the issue in Africa is that inefficient appliances have been dumped here for a long time. They overconsume energy, which creates an inflated need for grid capacity. And then governments build generation capacity to meet these inflated projections, which creates a huge delta in capital investment relative to the actual need. As a result, they’re spending money on power grids that could’ve been invested elsewhere, like schools or hospitals or job creation. Making matters even worse, these big generation capacities put the utilities in even greater debt because there aren’t enough appliances to use them all.

So our hypothesis here is that if we introduce efficiency regulations into the appliance sector, it allows the government and utilities to right-size the grid and right-size their capital spending.

Baur: Can you give examples of where this kind of approach has been tried and found successful?

Aziebor: Well, if you look at appliance dumping, African leaders have been at the forefront of a lot of these initiatives. For a long time, companies have sent products they can no longer sell in other parts of the world to the continent. This was happening with fluorescent lighting, which is extremely toxic, and African policymakers pushed back, which was instrumental in getting global agreement to phase out the production of fluorescent bulbs.

I haven’t seen a large-scale program for other appliances, but I will mention a related example. Some time ago, the national government in Ghana came up with a way to transition all urban communities from charcoal to LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) as a cooking fuel, because we have abundant natural gas resources and the use of charcoal was causing deforestation in rural communities. So what did they do? They basically set up a government-owned LPG cylinder manufacturing company. They said, “Everybody, you’re going to get a subsidized cylinder and your first LPG fill-up is going to be free.” They also used a portion of taxes from petrol sales to fund the LPG program. All that helped people get used to cooking with LPG, since cooking is so cultural.

This program has been running for more than more than 20 years. Now, if you go to urban homes in Ghana, every one has a gas cylinder that they are using.

So this is one clear example where at the national level, the government drove adoption. And we see successful examples all the time with other kinds of infrastructure. The government provides the funding to build the airport and we all pay for flights to keep it operating. The government builds the road and we all pay a toll to use it. So these things can be translated into conversations about appliances—how public capital could be used at scale to address a particular solution.

But one problem we have in the appliance sector in Africa is that there are too many Mickey Mouse pilot projects. The problem has always been around scaling.

That means the government needs to be involved. For a very long time, we’ve had the impression that the private sector and nonprofits are the most important partners in the appliance sector. The idea was that nonprofits bring the money to derisk the private sector. But we must flip this equation. To reach the scale we need, we need to bring government to the table very early on.

The government is a fulcrum around which we all must build. The nonprofit brings philanthropic capital, the private sector brings commercial capital, and governments bring public capital to scale. But if we are not looking at scale with that equation in mind, it becomes difficult. We must be intentional. We know solar water pumps work; we know green milling can become a conduit for local economic development. So how can we get governments to scale these solutions, creating national programs where they invest public money into resolving both job creation and access-related issues? That is where I think the conversation should be.

Nairobi, Kenya, 20 October 2025 – New research conducted by CLASP shows that to provide electricity for the 1.6 billion people who live with unreliable power and the 666 million who completely lack access, we must prioritize appliance access alongside energy infrastructure investments.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that achieving universal energy access by 2030 will take at least $50 billion USD of annual public investment. CLASP has determined that 10–15% of this amount (about $7.5 billion USD annually, or $38 billion USD in total) should be devoted to improving appliance access.

A reliable supply starts with reliable demand

CLASP’s new report, The Missing Piece of Energy Access: Why 15% of Energy Infrastructure Investment Must Go to Appliances, describes how the communities that remain unconnected to power supply infrastructure (located primarily in Sub-Saharan Africa) are those that are hardest to reach and have the lowest ability to pay. This makes the expense of building new infrastructure hard to justify for power supply developers and policymakers.

The report suggests that policymakers and other decision makers allocate 10–15% of power supply investments to establishing sustainable electricity demand growth. These investments should target market failures that hinder appliance use—in particular, a lack of affordability and consumer confidence. Importantly, all stakeholders should prioritize energy-efficient appliances over standard, less-efficient appliance options.

In-depth analysis also demonstrates that energy-efficient appliances are essential to reaching the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG 7) of universal energy access by 2030 and the Paris Agreement target of net zero emissions by 2050. Researchers found that prioritizing energy-efficient appliances over less-efficient alternatives could avoid as much as 2.6 gigatons of CO2 equivalent emissions annually.

“I think we have to look at the pace of change in terms of the SDG indicators, not in its absolute but relative to what’s happening, and ask the questions, what’s not working?”  —Bishal Thapa, Chief Strategy and Impact Officer