Driving access to clean cooking solutions for Persons with Disability
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In Kenya, persons with disabilities living in remote, marginalised, and underserved areas face multiple, intersecting barriers to accessing clean cooking solutions—a basic need that continues to be out of reach for many. Structural inequalities, combined with limited accessibility and prevailing stigma, have prevented many people with disabilities from fully benefiting from these technologies.
While broader efforts are underway to shift communities toward cleaner, safer cooking methods, these often do not reflect the lived realities of persons with disabilities. As part of Kenya’s energy transition, ensuring that no one is left behind requires a more inclusive approach that recognises and actively addresses physical, financial, social, and informational barriers to access.
Across Kenya, approximately 90% of rural households continue to rely on biomass fuels, such as firewood and charcoal, for cooking, a practice that poses significant health and environmental risks. For persons with disabilities, the challenges are even more pronounced. Mobility constraints, inaccessible infrastructure, discriminatory attitudes, lack of accessible information, and exclusion from financing and distribution models hinder their adoption of cleaner energy technologies.
According to the 2024 FinAccess Household Survey by the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK), 80% of people with disabilities live in rural areas, where access to clean cooking technologies is particularly limited. The intersection of disability and rural residence deepens their exclusion from energy access initiatives, making targeted interventions critical.
A step toward inclusive access
Efforts to design and deliver more inclusive energy solutions are underway. One example is the Kenya Off-Grid Solar Access Project (KOSAP), a Ministry of Energy initiative funded by the World Bank. It aims to provide clean cooking and solar solutions to underserved counties, with a deliberate focus on reaching persons with disabilities and other marginalised communities.
KOSAP uses a Results-Based Financing mechanism to support private sector actors in delivering higher-tier clean cooking solutions in remote and low-density regions where market entry has traditionally been limited or non-existent. The project has actively engaged vulnerable and marginalised groups, including women and youth, in energy access initiatives. To date, KOSAP has supported the creation of close to 4,500 jobs for these groups, 93% of whom are youth and 44% women, with many serving as sales agents, stockists, or direct users of solar and clean cooking solutions.
This inclusive approach is how Stephene, who lives with a visual impairment, was engaged, trained, and supported to become a local sales agent in his community, helping distribute clean energy products while earning a sustainable income.
Spotlight: inclusion in action through clean cooking champions
In 2022, 32-year-old Stephene relocated from Kisumu to Kilifi due to concerns about election-related unrest. He had earlier been a participant in the Equity Bank Ltd Scholarship Wings to Fly programme for secondary school. It was during this time that his interest in sustainable energy solutions was sparked, particularly clean cooking and solar technologies.
I truly believe disability is being abled differently. Sometimes things happen to challenge us and prove we are more than capable of delivering beyond expectations.
Stephene
Through the scholarship, he was introduced to clean energy technologies and later trained as a sales agent under the KOSAP-supported programme. He subsequently joined the county’s clean cooking programme and was equipped with the skills and tools to become a Clean Cooking Activator – responsible for promoting adoption of cleaner technologies, mentoring other agents, and identifying energy access gaps across communities.Stephene is now able to support his family helping with school fees and daily expenses while contributing meaningfully to community wellbeing.
His role includes training local entrepreneurs, many of them women and youth, to expand distribution and awareness of clean cookstoves and fuels. While his visual impairment presents logistical challenges, Stephene has overcome them through resourcefulness and determination. With support from KOSAP’s market entry funds, he invested in training materials and expanded his outreach into harder-to-access villages. His savings allowed him to purchase a motorbike, drastically improving his ability to supply stock, deliver stoves, and support his network of agents.
One of his mentees, Irene in Malindi, has become a key player in the local clean cooking ecosystem, further extending impact in nearby communities. Stephene also helps new agents access products on loan, reducing upfront financial barriers many face.
Stephene is now able to support his family helping with school fees and daily expenses while contributing meaningfully to community wellbeing.
“Kilifi is very remote, with a lot of poverty,” he says. “But introducing these technologies is changing lives. Families are together, they are earning income, and persons with disabilities like me are not being left behind.”
Inclusion by design: what does it take?
While Stephene’s personal achievements are significant, his story points to a larger imperative: inclusive energy access must be designed intentionally from the outset. Access to clean cooking isn’t just about having the technology — it’s about making sure systems and policies recognise diverse needs and remove embedded barriers.
“Our approach intentionally integrates accessibility into all stages of the project, ensuring that persons with disabilities are not just service users but active participants” says Faith Angasa, the project’s Environmental and Social Safeguards Officer. “We’ve implemented accessible training programmes, developed local financing models tailored to diverse needs, and designed adaptations for various needs, whether visual or mobility-related. These adaptations are critical in ensuring that no one is left behind in our mission to provide clean energy access.”
Too often, persons with disabilities are considered an afterthought in energy access efforts—if considered at all. Programmes like KOSAP offer promising models for more inclusive delivery, but more is needed to mainstream these approaches across the clean energy sector.
For PWDs like Stephene, inclusion in clean energy programming is not only a matter of fairness — it’s an opportunity to exercise agency, generate income, and lead change in their communities.
Stephene’s story is one of many demonstrating how deliberate inclusion in energy access, especially in hard-to-reach marginalised groups and areas, can shift outcomes at both household and system levels. When persons with disabilities are not only recipients but drivers of innovation, the result is deeper, more lasting change.