Nearly one billion people across Africa continue to rely on firewood and charcoal for their daily cooking needs, driving household air pollution that claims approximately 815,000 lives annually on the continent. Sharing his personal experiences at the May 2024 International Energy Agency Summit on Clean Cooking in Africa held in Paris, Akinwumi Adesina—who was then the President of the African Development Bank—described studying beside open cooking fires and smoky lamps, and directly connected this early exposure to vision impairment.
While the downstream energy conversation across the region has been dominated by refining for a decade, Liquefied Petroleum Gas has emerged as the continent’s fastest-growing petroleum product and a backbone of clean cooking. According to industry data, LPG accounts for 76% of individuals gaining clean cooking access in sub-Saharan Africa. However, consumption remains severely constrained by an underbuilt supply chain, registering just 6.4 million tonnes—or 4.8 kilograms per person—in 2025, compared to more than 50 kilograms per person in North Africa.
Demand grew by 12% last year, and CITAC Africa forecasts it will nearly triple to 17 million tonnes by 2045. Demographic pressures are mounting rapidly alongside these figures, with projections indicating that by 2050, one in every four people worldwide will be African. Between 2022 and 2023 alone, sub-Saharan Africa’s population expanded by 30 million, while only 11 million people gained access to clean cooking solutions.
Infrastructure Bottlenecks Constrain Growth
The primary barrier to scaling clean cooking is not consumer demand, but rather a lack of adequate transport, terminal, and storage infrastructure. No sub-Saharan terminal is currently capable of discharging a full Very Large Gas Carrier cargo holding roughly 45,000 tonnes, despite the United States serving as Africa’s largest LPG supplier. Across the continent, only about 20 storage facilities hold 10,000 tonnes or more, leaving regional stocks to cover ten days of demand or less.
Because long-term contracts are rare, African buyers rely predominantly on the spot market for small, expensive shipments without price predictability. Market vulnerability was exposed when the Strait of Hormuz closed in 2026, causing import prices in East and West Africa to spike 70 to 100% above their 2025 averages. When refill costs double or local depots run dry, households immediately revert to charcoal, demonstrating that clean cooking scales strictly at the speed of its underlying fuel supply chain.
Regional Hub Consortia and Financing
Bridging the infrastructure gap requires coordinated capital deployment spanning gas processing plants, VLGC-capable import hubs, strategic storage facilities, cylinder manufacturing, and inland logistics. The IEA estimates that achieving universal clean cooking access in Africa will require about $2 billion annually by 2040, representing less than 0.1% of global energy investment. Capital itself is not scarce, but bankable structures remain limited, as many programmes historically fund only stoves rather than the entire distribution chain.
Building a functional supply network requires multi-stakeholder models. International traders such as Petredec, Vitol, and Trafigura possess the balance sheets and shipping fleets to operate multi-country hubs, while US producers can secure long-term offtake agreements with formula pricing over 12 to 24 months.
Anchor and Corridor Markets Drive Expansion
Geographic investment priorities center on three distinct tiers. Anchor markets like Nigeria, Côte d’Ivoire, South Africa, and Angola already account for over half of sub-Saharan demand. Nigeria consumes roughly 1.4 million tonnes annually and targets 5 million tonnes by 2030, while Durban is adding a 30,000-tonne terminal with a connecting rail hub to Gauteng. Meanwhile, Angola utilizes its terminal at Barra do Dande to act as a regional supplier.
Coastal corridor hubs are expanding to supply landlocked neighbors. In Kenya, Taifa Gas is completing a VLGC-capable terminal in Mombasa to serve Uganda, Rwanda, South Sudan, and eastern DRC. Operating multi-country hubs is made possible because global commodity firms like Trafigura, Vitol, and Petredec maintain the necessary shipping assets, risk mitigation frameworks, and financial strength.
Frontier markets offer the largest potential upside. The Democratic Republic of Congo and Ethiopia house a combined population exceeding 250 million people, yet consumed merely 25,000 and 28,000 tonnes of LPG respectively in 2025. Establishing supply routes into these markets remains a defining challenge for developers.
ARDA Convenes Stakeholders in Dar es Salaam
Industry leaders are scheduled to gather at ARDA’s third LPG Forum in Dar es Salaam on November 24–25, 2026, under the theme “Unlocking Africa’s LPG Potential: A Catalyst for Industrialisation, Energy Security and an Inclusive Energy Transition,” to explore how stakeholders can seize this opportunity.
