Kenya, Norway and the United States will co-host the second Africa Clean Cooking Summit in Nairobi on January 27 and 28, 2027, President William Ruto announced, as the three countries seek to accelerate investment and expand access to clean cooking solutions across the continent.
Ruto made the announcement on Tuesday, September 22, 2026, while co-hosting a high-level clean cooking event with Norway on the sidelines of the 81st United Nations General Assembly in New York.
“On 27 and 28 January next year, we will co-host the second Africa Clean Cooking Summit with Norway, the United States, the International Energy Agency, and other partners,” Ruto said, inviting participants to arrive in Nairobi prepared to announce specific, actionable steps rather than new pledges alone.
“When we meet in Nairobi, let each one of us come prepared to point to one concrete step. A policy approved, a procurement launched, financing deployed, an investment committed, or a project advanced,” he said.
At the New York event, Kenya presented a $600 million investment opportunity in institutional clean cooking, spanning schools, healthcare facilities and correctional services. “To translate that ambition into investment, we recently launched the Institutional Clean Cooking Investment Pack. It identifies a US$600 million investment opportunity across schools, healthcare facilities, and correctional services,” Ruto said.
In a separate statement posted on his official X account following the event, he framed clean cooking as a matter extending well beyond household convenience.
“Clean cooking is energy infrastructure, vital to public health, economic opportunity and Africa’s green transition,” he said. He added that turning demand for clean cooking into genuinely investable projects would require local-currency financing, guarantees and results-based funding mechanisms, rather than relying on grants and pledges alone.
The January summit will build on momentum first generated at the inaugural Summit on Clean Cooking in Africa, held in Paris in May 2024, which mobilised $2.2 billion in pledges from governments and the private sector across nearly 60 participating countries.
A subsequent progress update published by the International Energy Agency (IEA) in July 2025 found that more than $470 million of those Paris commitments had already been disbursed, alongside a new roadmap setting out a cost-effective pathway toward achieving universal clean cooking access across sub-Saharan Africa by 2040.
A planned in-person follow-up summit in Nairobi, originally scheduled for July 2026, had to be rescheduled after the African Union flagged concerns over an Ebola outbreak affecting parts of the continent at the time, with a high-level virtual meeting held that month in its place before the physical summit was rebooked for January 2027.
The IEA lists Kenya, Norway, the United States, the African Union Commission and the African Development Bank among the summit’s co-chairs and co-organisers. According to the IEA, roughly one billion people across Africa currently lack access to clean cooking solutions, relying instead on traditional fuels such as wood and charcoal that carry significant health, environmental and economic costs.
The Nairobi summit is expected to bring together governments, investors, development partners, industry representatives and civil society to review progress made on existing clean cooking commitments and to secure further financing commitments aimed at expanding access across the continent.
The clean cooking announcement formed part of a broader push by Ruto during UNGA week to advance Kenya’s economic diplomacy, alongside separate engagements on critical minerals, artificial intelligence and wider financial-system reform, all tied to Kenya’s continuing argument that Africa needs stronger mechanisms to mobilise its own capital while attracting greater international investment into the continent’s energy transition and development priorities.
