Multidimensional Impacts of Traditional Cooking Practices in Ethiopia

Abstract The majority of Ethiopian households use traditional cookstoves and fuels to cook their meals. Only few of them use clean fuel cooking stoves with electricity. In Ethiopia, switching from traditional cooking practices to clean cooking solutions is not an easy task. The paper focuses on the assessment of traditional cooking practices in Ethiopia and their impacts on health, environment, gender and economic dimensions of the society. Quantitative and qualitative methods were applied, whereby data were collected through detailed literature review, interviews, focus group discussions, stakeholder consultations and workshop and open data sources. Data were analyzed by descriptive statistics, interpretations and narrations. Households in Ethiopia use energy and stove stacking based on the culture of cooking of a particular community. The cultures of cooking in the northern, southern, eastern and western parts of Ethiopia differ from each other. Qualitative results from stakeholders’ consultation, group discussion and interview emphasized that traditional cooking solutions are accompanied by high fuelwood consumption leading to high fuel purchase costs and environmental degradation, elapsing more cooking time and fuel collection by women and children at the expense of other productive activities. In addition, the outcome is higher emission of greenhouse gases resulting from fuel and stove inefficiency that exacerbate climate change. These negative consequences of traditional cooking solutions will bring greater impacts on the health, environment and socio-economic well-being of the communities. Empirical studies have shown that a considerable number of deaths could be avoided by adopting improved and clean cooking solutions that could minimize indoor air pollution. The same is true for avoided emissions, forest degradation and the time burden of women and children. Transitions from traditional cookstoves to higher-tier stoves using financing and banning polluting technologies have the highest health, socio-economic and environmental benefits. The results show existing gaps in governance, research and development, investment and capacity building in transitioning traditional cooking practices in Ethiopia. This highlights the need for intervention on these to mitigate the costs of inaction of not transitioning from traditional cooking solutions to higher-tier cooking solutions. This could be possible through robust training, awareness creation, determined political commitment, cooking policy and strategy, and advanced promotional and advocacy works.