The United Nations Capital Development Fund’s (UNCDF) Tanzania Country programme is implementing a three-year CookFund initiative named “Accelerated Market Rollout Clean Cooking Solutions in Tanzania.” The Contribution Agreement is funded by the European Union (EU) and was signed at the end of November of 2021.

The official launch took place on the 13^th of December 2021, in Dodoma. UNCDF signed an agreement to implement the CookFund for accelerated market roll-out of clean cooking solutions in the country, which is simply titled the CookFund Programme for the years 2021-2024.

The CookFund Programme will be implemented in urban areas of five regions namely Dar es Salaam, Pwani, Morogoro, Dodoma and Mwanza in Tanzania’s Mainland.

The CookFund Programme is a key component of the broader integrated approach for enhancing the sustainable cooking value chains programme, which aims to contribute to Tanzania's climate change commitment by increasing the share of the population with access to sustainable cooking solutions. The United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) will co-implement the programme only in Dar es salaam City reaching out the market with only the Bioethanol. The Programme provides financial and technical assistance to support the accelerated market rollout of clean cooking solutions (stoves and fuels), leading to an improved environment, more jobs and business opportunities along the value chains.

The programme’s main objective is to address the policy and market challenges of the cooking energy sector in Tanzania to improve livelihoods, empower women and reduce climate change impact. The Programme targets SMEs (producers, importers, wholesalers, suppliers and retail distributors of cooking technologies), also consumer households, business (industries, hotels and restaurants) and institutions (schools, hospitals and colleges).

It is expected that over 640,000 household to be reached, over 180,000MT of charcoal to be avoided, over 350 SMEs to be supported, a total of 13,000 jobs to be created (1,700 direct jobs and 11,300 indirect jobs), 23,000ha of forest to be served and 5,000,000MT reduction of carbon emission to take place.

Speaking on behalf of UNCDF, the Senior Finance Specialist who is also the Acting Head of UNCDF in Tanzania, Mr. Imanuel Muro, acknowledged the government of the United Republic of Tanzania, the European Union, and the United Nations for their joint efforts in addressing the issue of energy for cooking that affect communities in the entire country.

He stressed that, UNCDF will continue to work with all stakeholders, the public and private sector, in finding innovative solutions that improve the livelihood and accelerate local economic development in the country.

About LFI

The Local Finance Initiative (LFI) is a UNCDF investment mechanism that enables developing countries to unlock domestic capital flow to invest in sustainable development. LFI mechanism of catalytic capital, technical assistance, and risk mitigation strategies has proved that transformative local development investments can tap into additional capital from both public sector and domestic capital markets. Finance is emphasized in the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development to implement under each Sustainable Development Goal (SDG). Significantly, SDG 17 sets the targets of “strengthening domestic resource mobilization, mobilizing additional financial resources for developing countries from multiple sources, adopting and implementing investment promotion regimes for least developed countries.”