A: The Just Stop Cooking (JSC) campaign, launched by WePlanet Africa in June 2025, is a satirical yet sobering response to a policy failure in climate circles. It uses humour to expose injustice by suggesting Africans stop cooking on certain days to help the Global North meet its emissions targets. The campaign highlights the absurdity of current development finance policies.

LPG (Liquefied Petroleum Gas) is a flammable gas mixture primarily made up of propane and butane. Unlike the natural gas delivered through pipelines—which is mostly methane—LPG is stored and transported as a liquid under pressure. It’s typically stored in pressurised tanks or cylinders, making it a convenient off-grid energy source where pipeline gas isn't available.

You’ve probably seen LPG in the form of blue canisters commonly used for camping stoves. But its use goes far beyond that—it’s widely used for heating, cooking, and even fueling vehicles in some regions. LPG is a byproduct of two processes: the refining of crude oil and the processing of natural gas. While LPG (butane or propane) is not a greenhouse gas (in contrast to methane) burning LPG does create CO2.

The Just Stop Cooking report gives a clear, evidence-based answer: it’s not that Africans won’t use solar or electric cookers — it’s that these technologies are currently impractical, inaccessible, or even dangerous in many real-world African settings. Here's why:

🔌 1. Electric cookers require electricity — and many communities don’t have it.

Hundreds of millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa still lack access to electricity. For many rural and peri-urban communities, grid expansion won’t arrive for decades.

Even where there is a grid, supply is unstable, electricity is expensive, and infrastructure can't support high-power appliances like electric cookers.

“E-cooking” is promoted in development plans, but in villages without grid access and with high electricity prices, this is wishful thinking, not policy.

☀️ 2. Solar cookers don’t match the reality of how people actually cook.

• Solar cookers are useless after sunset — but dinner is often cooked in the evening.

• Most cooking happens indoors, to protect against the extreme heat outside — and solar cookers can’t be used there.

• In many regions, cooking is done inside to protect against theft, animals, weather, or for cultural reasons.

• They don’t work during rain, cloudy days, or for large families who need high heat or longer cooking times.

• You can’t make staples like ugali, injera, matoke, or fufu reliably with a solar stove.

“While Europe builds dozens of LNG terminals, it urges Africa to wait for solar cookers that don’t work at night.”

💀 3. The alternatives people actually use are deadly.

Instead of solar or electric stoves, millions rely on wood, charcoal, or kerosene, leading to:

• 700,000 premature deaths annually from indoor air pollution in Africa.

• Massive deforestation (responsible for 40% of global forest loss).

Denying access to LPG without a viable alternative isn’t “green” — it’s lethal.

“Asking Africans to wait for clean energy that doesn't yet exist while they die from smoke is not environmentalism — it's moral failure.”

A: The campaign is addressing the evolution of climate finance rules in the Global North that exclude all fossil fuels from development funding, even those used for life-saving purposes like LPG, which is a clean -apart from being a fossil fuel-, affordable, and widely accessible cooking fuel. International agencies like the World Bank are telling Africa they cannot support a shift to cooking gas because it's a fossil fuel, based on climate investment rules pushed by Global North NGOs and governments forbidding money for fossil fuels.

A: For millions of African families who rely on wood and charcoal, being denied access to LPG means being denied the right to cook safely—or at all. With hundreds of millions of people still without access to electricity in sub-Saharan Africa, this policy means African families are stuck with wood and charcoal for cooking. As a result, thousands of women and children are dying from indoor air pollution each year, and Africa's forests are being levelled. Almost 1 billion people in Africa rely on wood, charcoal, or kerosene, causing 700,000 premature deaths per year, making indoor air pollution a bigger killer than malaria.

A: WePlanet recognises that in regions where the electricity grid may not arrive for decades, LPG is the fastest and most effective way to save lives, protect forests, and empower women. Experts we spoke to for this report agreed that a de-facto ban on LPG support in Africa is being promoted by Global North governments and campaigners at multilateral development banks. Denying this reality based on ideological rigidity is seen not as environmentalism but a moral failure. LPG is described as the most rapid scalable solution to reduce the use of solid biomass for cooking, save thousands of African lives annually, and stop ongoing deforestation.

A: The report highlights that while Europe is building dozens of new terminals to import natural gas (LNG), it urges Africa to wait for less viable alternatives like solar cookers or electric stoves where electricity is unavailable. Europe is not bound by World Bank rules and can pour billions into new LNG terminals using commercial loans. Just one of Europe's new LNG import terminals is the energy equivalent of sub-Saharan Africa's entire current LPG use. Germany alone has 19 bcm of LNG capacity under construction, which is three times more than the current LPG use of all sub-Saharan Africa. In energy terms, Europe has 7 times more LNG under construction than sub-Saharan Africa's current LPG consumption and 32 times more proposed. The message from the Global North is perceived as: fossil fuels for us, deforestation and hunger for you.

A: Carbon colonialism is described as a new form of climate injustice where the poorest are asked to sacrifice the most, while the richest continue to expand the very emissions infrastructure they refuse to allow in Africa. The report argues that if Europe wants to stop new fossil fuels, its efforts should begin at home and not be imposed as carbon colonialism on Africa. This is seen as "one rule for the rich, and another for the poor".

A: According to public health experts and sources interviewed for the report, there is resistance from influential donor countries and their development institutions to invest in LPG because it is a fossil fuel. Experts indicate this is particularly coming from Scandinavian governments and Germany. Some big green NGOs have demanded "a commitment from the World Bank Group to end all types of financial support for fossil fuels" without making an exception for clean cooking in Africa, implicitly demanding a ban on LPG support. While Green NGOs haven't explicitly said they oppose LPG for clean cooking in Africa, their publicly advocated demands for an end to all fossil fuel financing do not acknowledge the climate justice issues. This is described more as a "conspiracy of silence" or an absence of support than an explicit ban, coupled with a focus on non-viable solutions.

A: Both LPG and LNG are fossil fuels, but they are not exactly equivalent.

• LPG stands for liquid petroleum gas. It is largely butane and propane, produced as a by-product of oil refining, and is usually distributed in gas cylinders for household use. Butane and propane are not considered greenhouse gases.

• LNG stands for liquified natural gas. It is mainly methane, which is liquified by extremely cold temperatures for transport on ships and re-gasified at import terminals to enter gas pipeline networks. Methane from LNG is a highly potent greenhouse gas with a climate forcing 30 times that of CO2 over 100 years.

A: While LPG releases CO2 when burned, the report argues that its climate impact may be substantially net positive if it replaces CO2 released from forest destruction due to unsustainable harvesting of wood and charcoal. Deforestation actually creates far more carbon emissions than LPG cooking gas. Sub-Saharan Africa's direct CO2 emissions from cooking gas in a Clean Cooking for All scenario would rise to about 0.05 Gt CO2/year based on WePlanet calculations, or 0.1 Gt in the IEA's estimate, which is still only a tenth of the emissions that will be generated by Europe's LNG building spree. The net impact of a shift to LPG in sub-Saharan Africa will very likely be carbon positive due to avoided deforestation. Cooking with traditional biomass can be as much as 10 times more carbon intensive than using LPG if unsustainably harvested. Achieving the IEA's clean cooking target globally could save up to 2 million hectares of forest per year, accounting for 40% of current worldwide deforestation.

A: The LNG terminals and pipelines already under construction in Europe are estimated to generate 195 megatonnes of CO2e per year if fully used. This is 12 times higher than all of sub-Saharan Africa's current LPG use emissions (16.2 Mt/year). If all proposed LNG projects in Europe are built, the resulting emissions will be 1,040 megatonnes of CO2e annually, which is 64 times higher than current SSA LPG combustion emissions. Even with a 3x increase in LPG use in SSA for clean cooking access, African emissions (48.6 Mt) would still only be a quarter of Europe's emissions just from LNG terminals and pipelines currently under construction.

A: Using solid biomass fuels for cooking inside homes causes high levels of indoor air pollution. Pollution levels in poorly-ventilated dwellings can be 100 times healthy levels. The death toll from household air pollution is estimated at 3.2 million worldwide each year, according to the WHO. Nearly 240,000 of those deaths are children under 5, with almost half of all deaths due to lower respiratory infection among this group caused by inhaling particulate matter from household air pollution. In Africa, household air pollution causes 700,000 premature deaths per year. Rapid transition to clean cooking with LPG in sub-Saharan Africa is seen as meeting an immediate public health priority. The IEA stated in 2022 that universal clean cooking access by 2030 could reduce premature deaths by over 500,000 a year.

A: According to the IEA, clean cooking access in Africa requires around US$2.5 billion per year of investment in clean cookstoves and other end-use equipment. Vijaya Ramachandran suggests about US$4.5 billion a year is needed for universal access globally, including infrastructure. The IEA states that the cost for Africa is about a tenth of the cost of a typical large LNG terminal investment.

A: WePlanet Africa is calling on the World Bank, other multilateral development banks, and governments in high-emitting countries to explicitly support an exemption from the ban on fossil fuel financing for LPG cooking gas in Africa. They ask that the World Bank make clear that funding for clean cooking, including LPG, is not covered by its ban, and that shareholders lobbying against LPG change their view and communicate this clearly to African governments with concessional financing available. Policy should be guided by the IEA's Clean Cooking for All scenario of a 3x increase in LPG use. They also suggest African governments can assist by removing VAT on LPG canisters and facilitating pay-as-you-go schemes, and that charcoal bans should only be maintained or introduced once affordable alternatives are in place.

Global North and Global South are terms that denote a method of grouping countries based on their defining characteristics with regard to socioeconomics and politics. Even though our campaign is launched from WePlanet Africa, the issue is relevant for the entire Global South. 4 million people die every year due to the effects of indoor air pollution caused by biomass cooking.