Ethiopia launches Clean Cooking Alliance

Ethiopia launches Clean Cooking Alliance (ECCA). The national alliance will serve as a platform to advocate for clean cooking, strengthen an enabling environment as well as support product and market development.

His Excellency Kebede Yemam, Deputy Commissioner of Ethiopian Forest and Climate Change Commission (EFCCC), stressed the need to work together to improve the traditional based cooking style which is prevalent in the country. He vowed to support the alliance to achieve its goals and contribute to the prevention of death from inefficient cooking stoves and fuels, conserve forests and mitigate climate change decreasing greenhouse gas emissions.

Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO) representative, Carmen Heinze, focused on the numbers of people affected by household air pollution to demonstrate the reason for uniting forces to fight against health risks and unclean cooking solutions.

In a video message, the CEO of Clean Cooking Alliance, Dymphna van der Lans, addressed the audience. She said the global alliance is looking forward to work with partners like SNV, local alliances and others to develop and implement sustainable fuel and cookstoves strategies.

Worku Behonegne, Country Director of SNV Ethiopia and the chairman of the Board of Directors of Ethiopian Clean Cooking Alliance, called upon clean cooking stakeholders to extend their unreserved support to prevent death from substandard cooking stoves and fuels.

ECCA is registered as a local organisation under the Ethiopian Civil Society Organisations Proclamation No. 1113/2019. It was accorded a legal entity with the registry number 4284 on the 15 July 2019. The alliance has 39 registered members and encourages associate and honorary membership. The alliance stands on three membership pillars: state, non-state and private sectors. ECCA has also elected a Board of Directors. The current board members will serve for the coming three years.

The alliance strives to build solidarity amongst clean cookstoves and clean fuels stakeholders and create effective partnerships to ensure the use of clean cookstoves and fuels is seen as the norm in Ethiopian households and institutions.

Strengthening the Enabling Environment for Clean Cooking Sector of Ethiopia (SEECCS) supported the establishment process of ECCA technically and financially. SEECCS was initiated to strengthen the enabling environment of the clean cooking sector in Ethiopia with interventions around organisational and institutional capacity development and sector facilitation, including for Improved cookstoves, biogas and bio-fuel.