Программа ENACT в Уганде создает условия для массового внедрения чистых кухонных печей

Over the course of history, many technologies that have formed the foundations of modern economies, along with the systems and industries that sustain them, have taken root through interactions between economic, social and political conditions. However, the scale and urgency of the energy transition, as well as wider climate and developmental imperatives, mean that the transition to sustainable energy cannot be left to market forces alone. With the 2030 horizon for achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) fast approaching, the consensus is that the SDG 7 target of universal access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy will not be met. In emerging economies where policy frameworks, financing systems and local enterprises are evolving, energy markets must be actively constructed. The transition of modern cooking in Africa is a clear example. The technologies exist. The demand, both real and latent, is enormous. The climate case, health, and gender empowerment case is undeniable. Yet markets have been slow to form. Why clean cooking? While 81% of urban Africans are considered to have access to electricity, only 1% use it for cooking, despite cooking accounting for the largest share of household energy consumption. The use of traditional biomass fuels for cooking, like charcoal, exposes households to toxic levels of pollutants, causing severe health risks. Household air pollution causes an estimated 3.2 million deaths globally every year—more than malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS combined. Coordination is critical to scale markets Energy markets are built through institutions that connect policy makers, financiers, entrepreneurs, and customers. As such, Africa’s clean cooking transition sits at the intersection of several complex systems: national energy policy, city-level governance, private sector distribution networks, technology research and development, consumer finance markets, as well as climate and carbon finance. To achieve the energy transition goals, these systems need to be engineered to work in concert. Without strong coordination between them, even promising technologies struggle to scale at the necessary rate. A key coordination challenge that directly impacts African businesses closest to the realities of underserved energy markets is what many observers describe as the “missing middle” of the energy transition. This refers to the critical capital gap where mid-market, growth-stage clean energy companies lack the necessary commercial resources, including financing, to grow from small-scale businesses to commercial scale. This gap represents one of the clearest opportunities for accelerating progress toward SDG 7: closing it would unlock substantial gains in both energy access and public health outcomes. While capital flows into early-stage venture technology and low-risk infrastructure projects, intermediate companies often fall into a “no man’s land” between high-risk investing and conservative infrastructure finance. Closing this gap requires better coordination between policy, the private sector and finance systems and organisations uniquely placed at the nexus of these systems. This is where market builders come in. Building and shaping markets: a practical agenda Organisations like ICLEI Africa play the role of market builders and shapers, aligning actors that would otherwise operate independently to close the “missing middle”. Their role typically involves three functions: - First, convening national governments and city authorities to integrate clean cooking into urban energy planning and helping city authorities move from “regulators” to “enablers” of private sector growth - Second, supporting SMEs to strengthen business models, expand distribution networks, and de-risk last-mile delivery. - Third, aligning international finance with local delivery capacity in a way that reduces investor risk rather than simply directing capital. The evidence from Kampala, Uganda The Enabling African Cities for Transformative Energy Access (ENACT) programme’s contribution to Uganda’s clean cooking transition agenda demonstrates what happens when locally embedded market interventions work. ICLEI Africa, as the lead implementor of ENACT, directly supports the country’s Clean Cooking Unit within the country’s Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development (MEMD) and has enabled the alignment of key actors in the clean cooking market, including city authorities, municipal councils and national governments (all tiers of government), clean cooking SMEs, development finance partners and community networks. ENACT offers an approach that translates national energy access and security ambitions into coordinated, locally-anchored delivery, unlocking the conditions for clean cooking and other technologies at the threshold of scale in practice. By strengthening the commercial readiness of SMEs and supporting governments in creating a more enabling market environment that addresses barriers to scale, ENACT set itself the objective of supporting the transition to clean and modern cooking for 30,000 people located in inner city and peri-urban informal settlements. The programme surpassed this and reached more than 60,000 people with clean and modern cooking, with a growing share using eCooking for the first time. Market interventions may be in the form of time-bound programmes or mechanisms that deliver structured support to government development priorities over a defined period. These initiatives often combine technical assistance with targeted funding and financing to deliver beneficial development outcomes. Rather than simply funding isolated activities, these interventions can shape conditions for energy markets to transition: testing delivery models, building institutional capacity, de-risking private sector participation and generating the evidence needed for future action and ultimately the scale of investment required to achieve universal energy access. The ENACT programme, supported by UK Aid through its Transforming Energy Access (TEA) platform and MECS programme, bolsters key clean cooking market interventions led by the Ugandan Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development’s Clean Cooking Unit. ENACT’s success shows that market-led energy programmes delivered through, with, and by local partners, create sustainable institutional relationships, delivery capacity, the evidence base and market confidence needed to turn clean energy access priorities into investable and scalable implementation pathways. Bringing sustainable energy technologies that delivery development outcomes to scale must go beyond funding the development technologies or enterprises. They require local institutions capable of building and shaping the market system itself. Without this coordination layer, investment in the sector risks remaining fragmented and proven technologies that are ready for wider adoption remain constrained by the market systems needed to take them to scale. With more integrated approaches, like ENACT, energy technologies such as clean and modern cookstoves can move beyond isolated projects and become major pillars in a transformed African energy systems.