The Modern Cooking Facility for Africa (MCFA) has a new contributor. The European Union (EU) is contributing €12.5 million. This funding is intended to support access to clean cooking in Zambia. In this East African country, only 16% of the population has access to clean cooking. The challenge is therefore immense for the Zambian authorities who will benefit from the support of the MCFA.
As part of its activities in Africa, this Swedish-initiated facility provides performance-based funding, combined with catalytic grants, to support private companies that develop and sell clean cooking services. In Zambia, the MCFA will support the distribution of 170,000 clean and affordable stoves, benefiting at least 870,000 Zambians.
A ZEEST spinoff
“Current factors limiting access to clean cooking services in Zambia are affordability and access to credit, as well as consumer cooking behaviour and lack of awareness of the benefits associated with clean cooking,” says the funding mechanism managed by the Nordic Environment Finance Corporation (NEFCO).
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The EU is providing funding under the Zambia Energy Efficiency and Sustainable Transformation Programme (ZEEST), whose main objective is to unleash the potential of the private sector to contribute to the achievement of national energy efficiency and climate resilience goals. The programme is funded by the 11th European Development Fund (EDF), for a total amount of €25 million.
The MCFA, which contributes to the implementation of ZEEST, is also funded by Sweden, which launched the facility with €32.6 million. The mechanism supports access to clean cooking in five other sub-Saharan African countries, including the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Mozambique, Tanzania, Kenya and Zimbabwe.
Jean Marie Takouleu