African countries have secured an additional $900 million in commitments to expand access to clean cooking, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said after a high-level virtual meeting on Thursday.

The new pledges bring total commitments to more than $3.1 billion since the inaugural summit in Paris in 2024, where governments, development banks and private sector partners pledged $2.2 billion to help reduce reliance on polluting cooking fuels.

The virtual session brought together Kenyan President William Ruto, Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, US Energy Secretary Chris Wright, African Union Commissioner for Infrastructure and Energy Lerato Mataboge and IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol to review progress and announce new financial and policy commitments.

Nearly one billion people across Africa still lack access to clean cooking, relying on fuels such as firewood and charcoal that contribute to about 850,000 premature deaths each year, according to the IEA.

"Ambition alone is not enough. It must be backed by investment," Ruto said.

"Closing Africa's clean cooking access gap will require investment at scale, yet annual financing remains far below what is needed. That is why the announcements we have heard today are significant," the Kenyan president added.

The IEA said $740 million of the funds pledged at the 2024 summit has already been deployed across 22 African countries, while 121 new clean cooking policies have been introduced in more than 30 countries that account for 80% of Africans without access to clean cooking.

"At our 2024 Summit, we mobilized $2.2 billion in public and private sector commitments for clean cooking in Africa, to be disbursed in full by 2030. I said we would track every dollar committed and every stove delivered to households. Today, I am pleased to report that more than one-third of those funds has already been disbursed in just two years. Since then, new partners have stepped forward with a further $900 million in commitments, with more expected before the Summit reconvenes," Birol said.

The agency also launched a Clean Cooking Security Program to strengthen global supply chains for cooking fuels, particularly liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), after disruptions to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz affected global supplies earlier this year.

Clean cooking refers to the use of low-emission fuels and technologies, such as ethanol, biogas and electricity, instead of traditional fuels like charcoal and firewood.