Uganda targets 5 million households switch to clean cooking technologies by 2030

The government plans to cut the share of biomass energy used for cooking from 75 per cent to 50 per cent by 2030 as it ramps up efforts to move millions of households away from heavy dependence on charcoal and firewood.

The campaign is driven in part by Uganda Energy Credit Capitalisation Company (UECCC); a government-owned agency established in 2009 to facilitate and coordinate financial investments into Uganda's renewable energy sector 

Its Managing Director, Roy Nyamutale Baguma, says achieving the target will require moving millions of households towards cleaner technologies while mobilising private capital to supplement limited government resources.

He was speaking on Thursday during the Uganda Clean Cooking and Green Finance Forum 2026 at Eco Group Limited's manufacturing facility in Bujjuko, Mityana.

The forum, organised by Ecobank Uganda Limited in partnership with Eco Group Limited and the Uganda Church Commission, brought together financial institutions, clean-energy companies, faith-based organisations, schools, universities, hotels and government officials.

Baguma said Uganda's Fourth National Development Plan (NDP IV) targets reducing the share of traditional biomass in the energy mix from 75 per cent in the 2023/24 financial year to 50 per cent by 2030, while raising the share of clean energy used for cooking from 25 per cent to 50 per cent.

The 2024 National Population and Housing Census paints an even starker picture when the narrower measure of households whose primary cooking method qualifies as clean is considered. 

It found that only 3.8 per cent of households used clean fuel and technology for cooking. The figure stood at 6.5 per cent in urban areas and just 1.9 per cent in rural Uganda.

Uganda's National Energy Compact, published in 2026, similarly targets modern cooking solutions reaching 50 per cent of the population by 2030 and estimates that this will require extending cleaner cooking options to more than 4.6 million additional households.

Baguma said Uganda cannot achieve the transition by promoting a single cooking technology.

Instead, the government is pursuing a mix that includes electric pressure cookers, induction and other electric stoves, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), biogas, ethanol, solar cooking and improved biomass stoves.

Improved biomass technologies are expected to remain important during the transition, particularly in rural communities where households may not immediately afford electricity, LPG or other modern fuels.

The International Energy Agency has similarly identified LPG and electric cooking as important to Uganda's transition while recognising improved biomass cookstoves as a transitional solution for households with limited ability to meet the recurrent costs of modern fuels.

"What is critical today is that we have previously, through another programme, supported domestic cookstoves through price subsidies, but now on this occasion we want to bring together collaborators that can help us penetrate private institutions that are the major users of solid fuels such as charcoal and firewood," Baguma said.

He added that government financing alone cannot meet the scale of investment required.

"We are supposed to crowd in participation of partners, financial institutions and investors to come and help us so that we use our limited public resources in bringing more capital from other players," he said.

UECCC is implementing the Financial Intermediation Component of the Electricity Access Scale-Up Project (EASP), which provides financing for clean cooking technologies, off-grid energy and other clean-energy investments.

The programme provides working capital for clean-cooking companies and financing for households, businesses and institutions. The World Bank's project design specifically identifies schools, hospitals and other large institutions as targets because of their heavy reliance on biomass.

The transition is also creating opportunities for local manufacturing.

Eco Group founder and chief executive Rose Twine said her company has spent more than 14 years producing household cooking equipment and is now expanding local assembly.

The company manufactures and assembles energy-efficient cooking products, including household and institutional Eco Stoves. Its wider product range has included electric pressure cookers, solar-energy products and briquettes. Its signature stove technology uses volcanic rocks for heat retention, while the company also constructs permanent institutional stoves for schools, hotels, refugee settlements and other large kitchens.

Twine said the company plans to introduce a pay-as-you-go programme for domestic customers, allowing households to acquire appliances and pay for them over six to 12 months.

She said the company is also preparing to assemble electric and solar cookers at its Bujjuko factory.

"We have set up a new factory where in the next two months we shall start assembling all our electric and solar cookers here," Twine said.

She said local assembly should reduce dependence on finished imported products while creating jobs in communities around the factory.

"All people who work at this factory are people from this community. We skill the young people here," she said.

Baguma said supporting domestic manufacturers was important if Uganda is to develop a sustainable clean-cooking industry rather than depend entirely on imports.

"We are lucky that this supplier is manufacturing locally and we should encourage local content in this area of clean cookstoves," he said.

Faith institutions could provide another route for rapidly expanding clean cooking because of the number of schools, hospitals, churches and other facilities under their networks.

Rev Dr Jasper Tumuhimbise, Group Chief Executive Officer of Church Commissioners Holding Company Limited, the investment arm of the Church of Uganda, said the church is exploring ways of moving its institutions away from charcoal and firewood.

He said the Church of Uganda has 39 dioceses, more than 2,600 parishes and about 29,000 congregations, giving it considerable reach to influence household behaviour.

The church also operates thousands of education and health facilities that require energy for cooking.

"While we are this big, we have not been eager to protect the environment, but also there are no solutions for our schools and hospitals in regards to cooking clean," Tumuhimbise said.

He said the church had started collaborating with clean-cooking providers to enable dioceses and parishes to access cleaner technologies.

"We are also looking at exerting control in all our schools where we can ban them from using charcoal and firewood," he said.

Baguma said the involvement of churches could address a challenge that financing and technology cannot solve on their own: changing cooking habits.

"Behavioural change needs to be changed through evangelism and the church can take the lead in this," he said.

The environmental and health stakes remain high. The World Health Organisation estimates that household air pollution from polluting fuels and inefficient stoves causes about 3.2 million premature deaths globally each year.