Fueling Change: Addressing Sierra Leone's Cooking Energy Crisis Through a Multi-fuel Strategy

In Sierra Leone, the simple act of cooking costs the country about US$4.7 billion annually, with significant costs linked to the health sector (US$3.2 billion), women (US$1.4 billion from lost productivity), and climate (US$0.2 billion).¹

Sierra Leone has one of the lowest access rates to clean cooking and electrification in Sub-Saharan Africa. For many years, most households have relied on traditional biomass to meet their cooking needs. These fuels are affordable, accessible, and culturally familiar. While the three-stone open fire (TSOF) and the metal charcoal stove are often the most affordable choice, they are also among the least efficient, contributing significantly to indoor air pollution (IAP) and the adverse health effects that follow.

Indeed, indoor air pollution is the leading cause of death in Sierra Leone. As of 2021, air pollution in the country led to 9,925 deaths annually, with indoor air pollution being the leading contributor, responsible for 8,679 of these deaths each year.² Many of these premature deaths are associated with respiratory and cardiovascular disease, which is often accelerated by breathing in significant particulate matter produced by the incomplete combustion of solid biomass in a three-stone fire.³

The prevailing situation is driven by the fact that access to modern fuels is extremely low, reaching less than 1% of the population in Sierra Leone, necessitating heavy reliance on legacy cooking methods. Nationally, the three-stone open-fire stove is the most used cooking solution, adopted by 71.6% of households, followed by traditional cookstoves at 27.5%.

The adoption of clean cooking solutions remains extremely low, with only 0.48% of households using LPG and just 0.3% using biogas and improved biomass stoves.⁴ There are significant regional disparities in stove usage. Traditional cookstoves are more prevalent in urban areas, where 52.62% of households use them, compared to only 5.96% in rural areas. In contrast, rural households predominantly depend on the three-stone open-fire stove, with 93.81% relying on this method to meet their cooking needs.⁵⁶

For far too long, the cooking sub-sector has been treated as a peripheral issue, a household chore rather than a core development priority.

Yet the sector also represents a significant untapped opportunity for economic growth and sustainability.

Its lack of positioning as a key development priority stems from the absence of a strategic framework to guide the sub-sector, leaving in its place limited access to clean cooking solutions, persistent affordability and supply chain barriers, weak sector coordination, and fragile institutional arrangements. On the policy front, the country has faced setbacks stemming from misalignment within Sierra Leone's policy framework. Within the existing policy framework, there are notable inconsistencies and a lack of strategic alignment across sectoral instruments, resulting in fragmented implementation pathways and weak coordination toward achieving national clean cooking targets. In addition, the targets set out in the different policy frameworks and instruments are inconsistent and lack a clear implementation plan.

While these targets are broadly aligned with intent, variations in scope, technology definitions, baselines, and implementation mechanisms indicate the absence of a harmonised results framework. This misalignment risks duplication of efforts, inefficient resource allocation, and challenges in monitoring and reporting progress toward national energy access and clean cooking objectives.

A turning point

Globally, energy for cooking is increasingly a fixture in boardrooms and development forums, and is gradually ceasing to be left at the mercy of households.

The government of Sierra Leone has not been left behind and has taken a strategic step towards alignment of the sector through the development of the Sierra Leone Clean Cooking Strategy. The strategy is a multifuel strategy whose aim is to promote a mix of clean cooking technologies, such as LPG and electricity, improved cookstoves (ICS), and alternative renewable fuels such as biogas, briquettes, and pellets.

The strategy challenges the traditional narrative by positioning the sub-sector at the intersection of health, climate change, and economic transformation. It serves as an overarching coordination framework, harmonising targets, technology pathways, and institutional mandates that until now have been dispersed. It also provides a unified vision, standardised definitions, and an integrated results framework to guide sector actors, streamline implementation, and keep progress coherent across national clean cooking and energy access objectives.

The strategy sets out to dismantle the barriers in Sierra Leone’s cooking sector and accelerate the adoption of clean cooking solutions. To reach universal access by 2035, the country has set the pace with an ambitious multifuel policy framework anchored in a clear set of targets. The strategy recognises that the full adoption of modern fuels will be gradual and, as such, a leapfrog shift is not expected. In this context, the transition from traditional biomass to improved biomass solutions constitutes an important interim step towards cleaner and more sustainable energy use, even as households are expected to gradually adopt modern cooking solutions.

The Sierra Leone Clean Cooking strategy envisions achieving the set targets through five strategic interventions: demand-side subsidies and financing innovations; behaviour change communication; enterprise development and financing; policies, standards and regulatory frameworks; and collaboration and coordination.

The strategy is expected to catalyse far greater effort towards the country's clean cooking ambitions. It is a yardstick against which Sierra Leone can measure progress in the sub-sector, and a compass that gives direction to everyone working in it while serving as a critical tool for resource mobilisation and sector development. Above all, the strategy is more than a policy document. It is a blueprint for a healthier, more equitable future, and a bridge to the kind of progress that happens at the intersection of technology, finance, and human behaviour.

However, the development of the strategy is not an end in itself. With the strategy in place, the question is no longer whether Sierra Leone can achieve universal access, but how fast it is willing to move to deliver the smoke-free future Sierra Leoneans deserve. Like many developing economies, Sierra Leone can no longer afford the cost of inaction. Prioritising the transition to clean cooking is about more than exchanging stoves; it is about reclaiming the hours lost to collecting firewood and preparing food, saving hectares of forest, and protecting the very air breathed inside the home.

Achieving universal access to clean cooking, therefore, calls for sustained government commitment: a conducive operational environment, dedicated financial resources, and a robust framework to track progress on an ongoing basis. It is equally a call to action for all stakeholders to work together towards a shared agenda of universal access to clean cooking in Sierra Leone. With that commitment, the clean cooking agenda will move from the periphery to the centre of national development planning. And if the strategy is implemented effectively, it stands to mark a genuine turning point for the sub-sector, one in which access to clean cooking is no longer a privilege for a few but a necessity met for all Sierra Leoneans.

Authored by Abigael Okoko