Beyond charcoal ban: Why affordability matters more than enforcement
Uganda’s transition to clean cooking must focus on making alternatives affordable, accessible and convenient rather than simply restricting charcoal use, writes Dr Juliet Kabasiita Kiiza
Dr Juliet Kabasiita Kiiza. (File)
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OPINION
By Dr Juliet Kabasiita Kiiza
As Uganda implements its Fourth National Development Plan (NDP IV) and pursues its ten-fold growth strategy, how our families cook deserves far more attention. Cooking energy affects household incomes, health, forests, women's time and local businesses, yet it is treated as a household matter rather than part of national development.
On October 14, 2026, Speaker Jacob Oboth-Oboth suspended enforcement of charcoal trade restrictions pending a government report on alternative energy. The decision exposed a fundamental challenge: households cannot abandon fuels they depend on simply because their trade is restricted. They need alternatives they can afford.
Uganda's forest crisis makes this transition urgent. Forest cover declined from 24.1 per cent in 1990 to 12.6 per cent in 2023, according to the National Forestry Authority. Yet the 2024 census found that 64.5 per cent of households cook mainly with firewood and 28.2 per cent with charcoal. Only 1.7 per cent use electricity and 1.1 per cent gas. Most Ugandans are not choosing between convenient options; they use what their circumstances allow.
Clean cooking is not always more expensive. For many connected urban households, electric cooking is already cheaper. A 2022 Modern Energy Cooking Services (MECS) study found it cost about Shs34,000 a month, against sh60,000 to sh130,000 for charcoal.
But cheaper over a month does not mean affordable today. An electric pressure cooker must first be bought. Gas requires a cylinder, a stove and a refill. Economists call this a liquidity constraint. Put simply, it is expensive to be poor.
Clean cooking must therefore fit the way households earn and spend. Licensed gas suppliers could expand safe cylinder-exchange and refill services, including smaller approved cylinders. Mobile money and pay-as-you-go financing could spread the cost of equipment and fuel, and efficient electric cookers could be sold in instalments.
This is also a business opportunity. Neighbourhood retailers, including charcoal vendors, could distribute approved clean-cooking products through partnerships with licensed suppliers, joining the transition rather than losing their livelihoods. Gas handling, however, must meet safety standards; informal decanting is not acceptable.
We should also be realistic about charcoal. Traditional earth kilns waste much of the wood. Supporting efficient kilns, sustainable woodlots and regulated production would reduce damage while protecting legitimate livelihoods. Enforcement should target charcoal from illegally harvested natural forests, rather than treating all production as equally destructive.
In rural communities, efficient biomass stoves can reduce firewood use and smoke, although they are an interim improvement rather than genuinely clean cooking. Briquettes from surplus crop residues, and biogas for households with enough livestock, offer more options. Youth and women's groups could build businesses around them through the Parish Development Model, where feedstock and markets are reliable.
Financing need not fall on the national budget alone. The National Climate Change (Climate Change Mechanisms) Regulations, 2025 allow qualifying clean-cooking projects to access carbon finance, provided they demonstrate additional, verified emission reductions. Carbon revenue and transparent benefit-sharing could help communities afford better technologies. Tax relief on cylinders, efficient cookers and certified stoves would further lower upfront costs.
Uganda's National Integrated Clean Cooking Strategy, launched in 2025, aims for universal access by 2040. Its success should be measured not by stoves distributed, but by whether households keep using cleaner alternatives and pressure on forests declines.
We made mobile communication accessible by selling airtime in small amounts. Clean cooking needs the same ingenuity. Its future will not be determined by how effectively we stop people from buying charcoal, but by how successfully we make the alternatives affordable, accessible and convenient.
Dr Juliet Kabasiita Kiiza is a Climate Change and Green Economy Specialist |jkab75@yahoo.co.uk