Abstract
BackgroundThe delivery of clean cooking access to the 1.2 billion people who cook with charcoal, kerosene, and firewood may have a strong localized employment impact. With the challenge of a rapidly expanding youth population and growing job scarcity in sub-Saharan Africa, understanding the impact of clean cooking on employment as well as the skills gap is timely. However, there is little definitive data on clean cooking jobs. Recognizing this data gap, we sought to conduct a study focused specifically on employment from the clean cooking sectors in Kenya, covering liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), bioethanol, biogas, and electric cooking solutions. This study provides an initial baseline and early estimate of the clean cooking sector's direct formal and informal employment based on one year of company survey data, expert interviews, available literature, and local focus group discussion.ResultsIn Kenya, the clean cooking sector is estimated to provide about 19,000 direct, formal jobs and potentially 15,000 to 35,000 direct, informal jobs in 2019. While the clean cooking sector provided many jobs, the level of compensation and retention is low. In the LPG and electric cooking sector, sales and distribution are the biggest part of the workforce, while for bioethanol and biogas, manufacturing and assembling is dominant. The majority of the clean cooking sector's direct, formal workforce is reported to be skilled. Management, finance and legal, and product development and research are the most difficult skills to recruit for. Women’s participation is lower than 30% in the clean cooking sectors studied, and managerial positions have higher women’s participation than non-managerial ones.ConclusionThis research exercise establishes a baseline for understanding the employment impact of the clean cooking sectors. However, a massive data gap persists. Our study shows that while clean cooking sectors, especially LPG, are already providing tens of thousands of jobs, further studies are critically needed to map the employment impact of delivering universal clean cooking access.
Highlights
The delivery of clean cooking access to the 1.2 billion people who cook with charcoal, kerosene, and firewood may have a strong localized employment impact
Clean cooking employment estimates According to our survey findings, the total number of persons directly employed by the clean cooking sectors in Kenya in 2019 was about 11,000–19,000 full-time equivalence (FTE), of which, 9,100–17,000 are in the liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) sector, 700 in the bioethanol sector, 800 in the biogas sector, and 200 in the electric cooking sector
The large majority are in the LPG sector, 800 in the biogas sector, and 900 in the bioethanol sector
Summary
The delivery of clean cooking access to the 1.2 billion people who cook with charcoal, kerosene, and firewood may have a strong localized employment impact. With the challenge of a rapidly expanding youth popula‐ tion and growing job scarcity in sub-Saharan Africa, understanding the impact of clean cooking on employment as well as the skills gap is timely. There is little definitive data on clean cooking jobs. Background of the study Globally, 2.8 billion people do not have access to clean cooking and use fuel sources that produce health hazards [1]. In Kenya, where the rural population is 73% of the total population as of 2018, delivering clean cooking access could have a strong localized employment impact [5]
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