Determinants of access to clean fuels and technologies for cooking in Africa: A panel autoregressive distributed lag approach

Clean cooking fuels and technologies remain essential in addressing the climate crises, environmental degradation, deforestation, air pollution, health complications, and poverty. Nevertheless, many countries in Africa lack access to clean fuels and technologies for cooking. The extant literature remains scarce on the determinants of clean cooking fuels and technologies using macroeconomic indicators covering many African countries in a single study. This article addresses this gap using panel data from 38 African countries. The paper shows that rural population, particulate matter emission, and natural resources depletion significantly decreased access to clean cooking fuels and technologies in the long run while the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita significantly increased access to clean cooking fuels and technologies in the long run in Africa. The results show a bi-causal relationship between clean cooking fuels and technologies and rural population, GDP per capita, natural resource depletion, and particulate emissions damage. Understanding the determinants of clean cooking fuels and technologies will expand insights into addressing challenges associated with particulate emission damages. Governments in Africa should target improvements in GDP per capita, promote advocacies, and advocate for investments to address the limited access to clean cooking fuels and technologies, particularly for the rural poor.