DelAgua, leading developer of clean cooking carbon projects, delivering 100% subsidised improved cookstoves exclusively to rural communities across Africa, is proud to announce that its Live Well clean cooking programme has surpassed a significant milestone, impacting more than 10 million lives through the distribution of 2.3 million improved cookstoves to rural households in Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and The Gambia, making Live Well the largest clean cooking programme operating at scale across Sub-Saharan Africa:
Access to clean cooking technology for rural households is constrained not by demand, but by cost. Traditional biomass cooking remains prevalent across much of Sub-Saharan Africa largely because cleaner alternatives carry upfront costs that are unaffordable for rural households. DelAgua’s Live Well programme is designed to address this affordability barrier by providing a high-performance stove, integrated with education, fully funded through carbon finance.
The significance of this milestone extends well beyond the numbers themselves. Household air pollution from cooking fires remains one of the leading causes of preventable death in low-income countries, with women and young children bearing the heaviest burden. By replacing open fires with fuel efficient stoves that burn up to 71% less firewood, the Live Well programme is cutting harmful smoke exposure, easing the time and health burden carried by women, and reducing deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions at scale and, through carbon finance, self-sustaining for the long term.
“Ten million lives is more than a statistic, it represents millions of people breathing cleaner air, families saving money and time and easing pressure on forests across Rwanda, The Gambia, and Sierra Leone. This achievement is testament to our incredible team of over 10,000 local community- based colleagues who have made clean cooking a daily reality. For over a decade, we have combined carbon finance with rigorous, on-the-ground delivery to bring improved cookstoves to rural, underserved households. This milestone affirms our free issuance model designed to reach households priced out of clean energy access” – Euan McDougall, Chief Executive Officer, DelAgua
DelAgua’s proven model can scale well beyond its current footprint and the company’s next phase of growth will extend the program into new markets in 2026, with continued focus on the households for whom affordability has been the primary barrier to clean energy access.
