Carbon credit financing emerges as Africa’s biggest bet for expanding clean cooking

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Every morning, Mary Kavutha prepares breakfast for her two young children using an induction cooker in her Nairobi home. Two years ago, the businesswoman relied on a charcoal stove that filled her kitchen with smoke and cost about $1.15 in fuel each day.

Today, she says, for 80 cents in electricity tokens she can cook several meals.

“It cooks much faster, and is much safer because I have young children,” Kavutha said. “With charcoal there was always smoke in the house. Now I can cook indoors comfortably, and I spend much less.”

Nearly 1 billion Africans still rely on charcoal or firewood for everyday cooking. The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that household air pollution from these fuels contributes to about 850,000 deaths annually on the continent.

Like millions of other Africans, Kavutha switched not out of climate concerns but because the stoves are affordable since they are underwritten by carbon credit financing, which allows clean cooking companies to raise capital against future revenues from emission reductions.

Clean cooking companies are betting that carbon finance, long criticized over concerns about the credibility of some projects, could become Africa's most important tool for expanding cleaner household energy and reducing pressure on forests.

In June, the IEA announced Africa had secured $900 million in new financial commitments towards clean cooking technologies.

More than 30 governments in countries accounting for about 80% of Africans who still lack access to clean cooking have introduced 121 new clean cooking policies since the Paris climate summit in 2015, the energy agency said.

Clean cooking is not a luxury, but an everyday necessity affecting every household, Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu said after co-hosting an IEA conference on clean cooking in Dar es Salaam earlier this year. That followed the African Union’s Dar es Salaam Declaration on Clean Cooking, adopted by 30 governments last year.

Carbon finance has transformed what was once an expensive clean-energy product into one that millions of low-income households can afford, said Peter Scott, founder and CEO of BURN, which makes eco-friendly cookstoves.

“The only way clean cooking is going to scale on the continent is through carbon project finance,” Scott said. “Governments earn revenue and customers get a product they would never have been able to afford without that subsidy.”

The Nairobi-based firm said it has distributed more than 7.3 million cookstoves in 11 African countries.

“Our biggest innovation is not the stove itself, but the financing behind it,” Scott said. “Without that financing, many families cannot afford to switch.”

An efficient biomass stove that would normally retail for about $40 can cost customers as little as $5 after carbon subsidies. More expensive induction cookers are financed through carbon credits and short-term pay-as-you-go plans that spread payments over several months.

“Investors provide upfront capital that subsidizes the retail price of our stoves. In return, they receive revenue from carbon credits generated as households reduce their use of charcoal, wood and other polluting fuels,” he said.

The industry has adopted strict standards and more sophisticated measuring of emissions, including Bluetooth monitoring, digital verification and real-time usage data to address criticism of carbon credits.

Critics of the approach say relying too heavily on carbon credits to finance clean cooking is still risky.

In one setback, the Kenyan clean cooking firm Koko Networks, hailed as a poster child of Africa’s green transition, closed in February after failing to win a government letter of authorization to sell carbon credits.

Carbon money can help but should not be the foundation of the transition, said George Mwaniki, WRI Kenya representative and head of Air Quality for WRI Africa.

The problem, he said, is that carbon finance generally comes after the investment required to put cleaner cooking equipment into households.

“Carbon financing is more of a second financing source,” Mwaniki said. “That creates a problem for clean-cooking companies as they need money to manufacture and distribute equipment before they can generate the emissions reductions that ultimately produce carbon credits.”

“If we depend wholly on carbon credits to support the transition, it will be extremely slow and will not happen at the pace that we need it to,” he said.

Companies are adapting their approach to suit local conditions. BURN, for example, says its electric cooking is more viable in Kenya and Tanzania, while biomass stoves are preferred in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Madagascar.

Eco Safi, which operates in Uganda, Kenya, and Malawi, offers forced-draft pellet stoves and clean, renewable fuel made from agricultural waste. In Rwanda, BioMassters produces smokeless, locally manufactured, solar-powered pellet stoves and biomass-residue fuel, while ENEDOM manufactures agricultural-residue briquettes in Kigali.

For households like Kavutha’s, what matters is that a cleaner stove now costs less to own and operate than the charcoal she once depended on.

“My kitchen is cleaner, my children are safer, and I spend less," Kavutha said. "That is all that matters."

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Workers assemble fuel-efficient cookstoves at BURN, a manufacturer of clean cooking appliances, in Kiambu, Kenya, on July 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Allan Olingo)

Workers assemble fuel-efficient cookstoves at BURN, a manufacturer of clean cooking appliances, in Kiambu, Kenya, on July 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Allan Olingo)

Workers assemble fuel-efficient cookstoves at BURN, a manufacturer of clean cooking appliances, in Kiambu, Kenya, on July 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Allan Olingo)

Workers assemble fuel-efficient cookstoves at BURN, a manufacturer of clean cooking appliances, in Kiambu, Kenya, on July 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Allan Olingo)

Mary Kavutha prepares breakfast using a fuel-efficient cookstove made by BURN in Kiambu, Kenya, on July 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Allan Olingo)

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — The body of Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb commander who died while serving a life sentence for war crimes, lay in state on Monday as Serbia defied European Union warnings against allowing public homage to the man found guilty of the continent’s first case of genocide since World War II.

Thousands of mourners arrived early at the small Serbian Orthodox Church of St. Luke in Belgrade to honor Mladic, who is still viewed as a hero by many Serbs. His military officer's cap and saber rested on the coffin, which was flanked by men in fatigues.

Pro-government media in Serbia reported that Mladic will receive full military honors while the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Porfirije, will lead the funeral service.

Mladic “was a man who gave everything in his life for the Serbian people,” said Milan Dobric, a mourner who traveled from Kosovo for the funeral. “I am glad that this morning people are coming to pay special respect.”

Mladic died at 84 on Aug. 27 in The Hague, Netherlands, while serving a life sentence for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity his troops committed during the Bosnian war in 1992-95.

While the funeral arrangements were formally made by Mladic's family, the Serbian government sent a plane last week to bring his remains to Belgrade, and soldiers carried his coffin wrapped in the national flag. A military commemoration was held Saturday at an official Serbian army venue.

Populist President Aleksandar Vucic, a former extreme nationalist who supported Serbia’s expansionist policies during the war, described the funeral as an “emotional outpouring” that “has nothing to do with whether Vucic allowed something or not.”

Serbia is a candidate nation for European Union membership and has faced strong criticism for honoring Mladic after his death.

Marta Kos, the enlargement commissioner for the bloc, canceled an upcoming visit to Serbia in protest, arguing that “the glorification surrounding his death is incompatible with the values on which the EU path is built.”

Serbia, which backed Bosnian Serb forces during the war, remains defiant over its wartime role and accuses the West of anti-Serb bias.

Vucic said that "we (Serbs) have been persecuted and harassed for 30, 40 years .. always guilty whatever happens,” He added that “people just won’t take it any more.”

Vucic, who is not attending the funeral, previously has accused Kos of “lying.” The Serbian president has stepped up his anti-Western rhetoric ahead of an early parliamentary election expected next month.

A number of other European officials joined the criticism of Serbia, along with regional leaders and relatives of Mladic's victims from the war in Bosnia. The conflict left more than 100,000 people dead and over 1 million homeless before it ended in 1995 in a U.S.-brokered peace agreement.

Mladic was sentenced in 2017 for orchestrating the massacre of more than 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica in 1995; the yearslong siege of the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo and other war crimes, including setting up concentration camps for detained non-Serb civilians and enemy soldiers.

Since Mladic died, his nationalist admirers have held vigils, painted a series of murals with his image in Belgrade and lit flares in his honor. On Sunday evening, soccer fans displayed a huge image of Mladic and chanted his name at a match in Belgrade.

Serbia has refused to recognize that genocide was committed in Srebrenica, calling the massacre a “horrific crime” instead. Last year, Serbia buried another convicted war criminal, the former army chief of staff Nebojsa Pavkovic, with full military honors at a cemetery for distinguished individuals.

The Balkan nation's EU bid has stalled due to democratic backsliding and Vucic’s refusal to join international sanctions against Russia over the invasion of Ukraine.

A U.N. “safe haven” for Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims), Srebrenica ended up being overrun by Serbs who forced men and boys to strip, killed them and bulldozed their bodies into mass graves. The war started after the breakup of the former Yugoslavia when ethnic Serbs in Bosnia took control over swaths of Bosnian territory to form a country of their own and unite it with Serbia.

People line up to pay their respects to the former Bosnian Serb army commander Ratko Mladic, seen on the flags, who died last week while serving a life sentence for genocide and other atrocities during the war in Bosnia, at the St. Luka Church, in Belgrade, Serbia, Monday, Sept. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Marko Drobnjakovic)

People line up to pay their respects as Serbian war veterans stand around the coffin of the former Bosnian Serb army commander Ratko Mladic, who died last week while serving a life sentence for genocide and other atrocities during the war in Bosnia, at the St. Luka Church, in Belgrade, Serbia, Monday, Sept. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic)

Serbian national military servicemen stand around the coffin of the former Bosnian Serb army commander Ratko Mladic, who died last week while serving a life sentence for genocide and other atrocities during the war in Bosnia, at the St. Luka Church, in Belgrade, Serbia, Monday, Sept. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Marko Drobnjakovic)

A man touches the cross as Serbian national military servicemen stand around the coffin of the former Bosnian Serb army commander Ratko Mladic, who died last week while serving a life sentence for genocide and other atrocities during the war in Bosnia, at the St. Luka Church, in Belgrade, Serbia, Monday, Sept. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Marko Drobnjakovic)

A man touches the cross as Serbian national military servicemen stand around the coffin of the former Bosnian Serb army commander Ratko Mladic, who died last week while serving a life sentence for genocide and other atrocities during the war in Bosnia, at the St. Luka Church, in Belgrade, Serbia, Monday, Sept. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Marko Drobnjakovic)