- Date
- 22nd August 2024
- Categories
- Clean Cooking
By Dr Anna Clements (Gamos Ltd.).
The last few months have been big for Tanzania’s clean cooking future. Not only did the country launch their National Clean Cooking Strategy 2024-2034 in May, but President H.E Dr. Samia Suluhu Hussain also co-chaired the IEA Summit on Clean Cooking in Africa. This blog post takes a look at the Strategy, and an associated blog post (coming soon) looks at how the latest MECS programming in Tanzania, the eCooking Scale and Support Programme, responds to and aligns with the Strategy’s vision and implementation.
The National Clean Cooking Strategy is the result of nearly two years of hard work and stakeholder engagement by the Task Force set up following announcement by President Samia at the Tanzania Clean Cooking Conference in November 2022. This ambitious, forward-looking strategy has the high-level goal that 80% of Tanzanians are using clean cooking solutions by 2034. It was officially launched by the President in Dar es Salaam on Wednesday the 8th of May 2024, with key motivations for change being environmental degradation, climate change, health, gender, and the economy. Tanzania therefore joins the growing number of countries who are formulating national strategies to tackle clean and modern cooking, and there are several reasons why we at MECS are particularly pleased with the Tanzanian strategy.
Firstly, the Clean Cooking Strategy takes a multi-fuel approach to securing a clean cooking future. A multi-fuel approach ensures that consumers are given choice in how to meet their cooking needs and allows for different fuels to be used where they are best suited. The target fuels/cooking appliances are electricity, LPG, bioethanol, biogas, LNG, and ICS, and while there are not explicit targets for what percentage of cooking each one will supply, there are detailed targets and budgets behind each one.
Related to this, the Strategy is a great example of integrated energy planning – a theme that MECS has been researching and advocating for since 2018. Rather than having clean cooking plans and targets siloed from electricity plans and targets, why not join them together to ensure investment in electricity can be leveraged to gain progress in modern cooking? The Tanzanian strategy brings electricity access and infrastructure into a clean cooking policy document many times. For example, in the Situational Analysis in Chapter 2, the strategy notes that the government has been active with sector stakeholders on multiple strategic projects, such as electricity access and distribution. Throughout Chapter 4, on Strategies, targets, and outcome indicators, eCooking is present through electricity access targets, financing mechanisms, and plans for domestic manufacture.
We also admire how comprehensive the Strategy is. Organised into 10 Specific Objectives, the strategy covers awareness; access to materials and infrastructure; affordability; policies, laws, regulations and guidelines; investment; capacity building; research and innovation; and recognises the cross-cutting issues of gender, HIV/Aids, and good governance. This reminds us of the MECS approach to understanding how to scale modern cooking transitions across a country – that of the concept of a ‘jigsaw’ –how supporting a transition requires paying attention to the complex system of a country, where all the pieces need to be in place to enable scaled uptake. Read more here.
Finally, under each of the Specific Objectives, the Strategy lays out detailed targets and indicators for each fuel – a good example of the SMART approach to goal setting. This means that the implementation path forward is clear and not vague. Goals that we as a programme are particularly happy to see included revolve around the integrated energy planning between cooking and electricity already discussed, for example:
- All villages and hamlets to have electricity access by June 2028.
- Electric stoves to be manufactured in country from July 2025.
- Electric stoves to be possible to be paid for through the TANESCO LUKU meters (prepayment meters, that the majority of customers now have), to be implemented by June 2025.
Other multi-fuel goals we are pleased to see are:
- PAYGO to be implemented for relevant cooking appliances by 2034 across all regions of Tanzania.
- Taxes to be reduced on energy and appliances by June 2026.
- Guidelines on the quality standards for cooking energy, appliances, etc developed or updated and implemented by June 2025.
- National Clean Cooking Fund established by June 2025.
- Ban on biomass for institutions cooking for over 100 people.
- All Technical Education and Vocational Training colleges to have incorporated clean cooking into their curricula by June 2026.
And there are many more. We’re particularly excited to see on bill financing detailed in the Strategy – enabling customers to pay for eCooking appliances through prepayment meters will go far to addressing the barrier of uptake due to high upfront cost of eCooking appliances.
To cap it off, the Strategy also includes an implementation framework which sets out responsibilities, a M&E framework and strategy to assess progress, and a detailed Action Plan which sets out costs for the various activities.
We at the MECS programme think it’s great to see such a comprehensive Clean Cooking Strategy, and we are also delighted to be working with the Ministry of Energy in Tanzania and other stakeholders to support its implementation – through the new eCooking Scale and Support Programme for Tanzania.
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Featured image: Cover page of the National Clean Cooking Strategy 2024-2034 (copyright: The United Republic of Tanzania Ministry of Energy).