Access to clean cooking should accelerate in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe over the coming months. In any case, this is the aim of the new funding round recently launched by the Modern Cooking Facility for Africa (MCFA), a mechanism managed by the Nordic Environment Finance Corporation (NEFCO).
The new funding round, which starts in November 2023, “will further support the introduction and scale-up of modern cooking solutions to create long-term sustainable markets for these technologies in sub-Saharan Africa. Based on an external evaluation of the first round of MCFA funding, we are looking to provide more opportunities for clean cooking businesses by making a number of changes to the eligibility criteria and streamlining the application process,” explains Ash Sharma, Vice President of Nefco and head of the MCFA.
Access to clean cooking for 300,000 people
These changes will make “MCFA funding more accessible to start-ups”, he assures us. According to him, this new funding cycle will be divided into two funding windows combining results-based funding and catalytic grant funding. “The total funding available for the two windows will be €16 million, with individual tickets ranging from €500,000 to €2.5 million”, says the MCFA.
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