In 2021, over 83 % of Nigerians lacked access to clean cooking technologies and fuels [1]. This rate is just above the regional average for Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), which is 81.5 % [2]. On a global scale, Nigeria comes only behind China and India regarding the total number of people living without access to clean cooking.
The situation is particularly acute in rural areas, where only 4.6 % of the population had access to clean cooking in 2021, as opposed to 32.8 % in urban areas.
The lack of access to clean cooking energy has implications for achieving Nigeria’s health, air quality, climate, gender, and equity goals. The Global Burden of Disease study estimates that more than 128,000 people died in Nigeria in 2019 from household air pollution from the use of solid fuels [4]. Of these, 84,000 were children under 5. Nationally, over one in ten deaths of children under the age of 5 is caused by household air pollution.
