Tuesday June 24, 2025 – WePlanet has launched its “Just Stop Cooking” campaign, a satirical yet urgent call demanding the World Bank lift unjust restrictions on financing for clean cooking solutions.
The campaign highlights the devastating human and environmental costs of current climate finance policies hindering Africa’s transition from harmful traditional cooking fuels. It calls for immediate LPG exemption, warning that failure could cost hundreds of thousands of lives, accelerate deforestation, and deepen global inequalities.
“Just Stop Cooking” highlights the absurdity of policies denying Africans access to LPG while Europe continues to expand its fossil fuel infrastructure. At the core of the campaign is a critique of carbon colonialism—a system where the Global South is penalized for emissions it didn’t cause.
“While Europe builds LNG import terminals, it tells Africa to wait for non-viable solutions. This is carbon colonialism: one rule for the rich, another for the poor. LPG is not perfect, but it is the fastest way to save lives, protect forests, and empower women,” said Patricia Nanteza, Africa Coordinator of WePlanet. “Banning LPG financing is not environmentalism, it is moral failure.”
According to the African Development Bank, over 83% of people in Sub-Saharan Africa (900million) rely on firewood and charcoal to cook, leading to 700,000 premature deaths annually from indoor air pollution, disproportionately affecting women and children.
“Rapid transition to clean cooking with LPG in sub-Saharan Africa meets immediate public health priorities with climate, gender, and environmental co-benefits,” noted Patricia Nanteza.
A report of the same name, Just Stop Cooking, was also launched. Its foreword, by Hon. Issifu Seidu, Ghana’s first Minister of State for Climate Change and Sustainability, describes the campaign as “an urgent call for justice” and reiterates Ghana’s commitment to LPG. “Denying African countries concessional financing for LPG in the name of climate is a grave injustice,” Hon. Seidu stated. “We must put saving lives before ideology.”
Key Findings from the Report:
- 700,000 Africans die each year from indoor air pollution, primarily from cooking with wood and charcoal.
- Deforestation for cooking fuel accounts for up to 50% of tree loss in Africa. LPG could save millions of trees annually.
- Cooking with traditional biomass is up to 10 times more carbon-intensive than LPG.
- Europe is constructing over 11 LNG import terminals, one equal to all sub-Saharan Africa’s LPG use.
- Current donor pressure and World Bank rules bar financing for LPG, though it emits far less carbon than Europe’s LNG.
- WePlanet Africa calls on the World Bank, IMF, and bilateral donors to formally exempt LPG for clean cooking in Africa from the fossil fuel finance ban. This decision, they argue, should be taken at the World Bank/IMF Annual Meetings in October 2025.
About us
WePlanet advocates a pragmatic, science-based approach: a targeted exemption for LPG cooking gas. This short-term bridge would save lives and protect forests, paving the way for electric cooking by 2030, once reliable grid access is widespread. Achieving the IEA’s ‘Clean Cooking for All’ targets would require tripling LPG use, an increase covered by canceling just three of Europe’s LNG projects.