Before many families in Siaya County begin preparing their evening meals, a different kind of journey has already started.
Somewhere beyond the villages, trees that once stood as part of the landscape are being transformed into charcoal, a fuel that will soon help someone cook, earn an income or keep a household running. For many households, that small bag of charcoal represents something much bigger than energy;
It represents survival.
Siaya’s charcoal trade reveals a much larger challenge facing the continent. How do communities move toward cleaner energy without leaving behind the millions of people who still depend on traditional fuels to survive?
The answer is not only about forests or climate change; it is also about people, opportunity and the choices available to them.
The crisis begins before dinner
At dusk in Siaya, the first sign of the energy crisis is not a blackout. It is the glow of charcoal beneath a cooking pot.
The fuel may have been purchased in a small tin, wrapped in a paper bag or collected from a roadside seller. For a household with limited cash, that small quantity can mean the difference between serving a hot meal and sending a family to bed hungry.
Yet the charcoal carries a cost that does not appear on the seller’s scale.
Somewhere, a tree was cut. Someone spent hours tending a smoky kiln. A trader transported the charcoal to market, and a cook will breathe some of the pollution released when it burns.
The stove may be cheap to light, but the full bill is paid through damaged health, depleted landscapes and greenhouse gas emissions.
Siaya offers a close view of a problem repeated across Africa. Charcoal remains essential because it is available, familiar and divisible into quantities that poor households can afford. It is also part of an energy system that is placing growing pressure on communities and ecosystems.
Trees can become emergency income
Charcoal is not only consumed by poor households. It is also produced and sold by people with few dependable sources of income.
When a harvest fails, casual work disappears or a medical bill arrives, trees can become an emergency asset. Charcoal production may offer quick cash to pay school expenses, purchase food or settle a debt.
That makes the trade difficult to address through enforcement alone. Removing charcoal without replacing the income it provides can deepen the same poverty driving production.
The environmental consequences depend heavily on where the wood comes from and how the charcoal is made. Charcoal produced from sustainably managed trees, agricultural waste or invasive species has a different impact from charcoal made by repeatedly clearing natural woodland.
Production methods matter too. Traditional earth kilns can waste much of the wood’s energy and release methane, carbon monoxide and other pollutants during carbonisation. FAO guidance on sustainable woodfuels argues that better kilns, managed tree supplies and clearer regulation can reduce the damage while protecting livelihoods.
The problem is therefore not charcoal in isolation. It is an informal and frequently inefficient system in which trees may be harvested faster than they can regenerate.
The climate cost does not remain in the forest
When tree cover declines, the consequences spread beyond the place where the cutting occurred.
Trees protect soil, provide shade, store carbon and help water move into the ground. On farms, they can shelter crops from heat and wind while improving soil quality. Along rivers and wetlands, vegetation can reduce erosion and help protect water catchments.
Siaya is particularly vulnerable because many livelihoods depend on climate-sensitive activities, including agriculture and fishing. The county already faces damaging floods, periods of drought, rising temperatures and unpredictable rainfall.
Its County Climate Change Action Plan identifies unsustainable extraction of forest products to meet energy demand as a threat to local natural resources. The same plan calls for reforestation, agroforestry and the rehabilitation of degraded areas.
This creates a painful cycle. Poverty increases dependence on charcoal. Unsustainable charcoal production weakens landscapes. Weakened landscapes leave communities more exposed to climate shocks, which can destroy crops and income and push households back toward tree cutting.
The families contributing least to global climate change can become trapped inside one of its harshest local feedback loops.
The smoke follows families indoors
The environmental cost of charcoal is visible in tree stumps and sacks of fuel. Its health cost is easier to overlook.
Charcoal generally produces less visible smoke than firewood, but that does not make it harmless. Burning it in inefficient stoves or poorly ventilated spaces can release fine particles and dangerous levels of carbon monoxide.
The World Health Organization estimates that 2.1 billion people worldwide still cook with polluting fuels and technologies. Household air pollution was linked to approximately 2.9 million premature deaths in 2021.
Long-term exposure can contribute to stroke, heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and lung cancer. Women and children often face the greatest exposure because they spend more time close to cooking areas.
The health burden also reinforces poverty. A fuel chosen because it appears affordable can lead to medical expenses, lost working days and reduced household income.
A charcoal ban cannot cook supper
Governments understandably respond to forest destruction with charcoal restrictions, transport controls and enforcement operations. These measures may slow illegal harvesting, but they cannot succeed on their own.
If cleaner energy remains unaffordable or unreliable, demand does not disappear. Charcoal prices may rise, trade may move further underground and poor households may switch to firewood or other polluting fuels.
A successful transition must begin with the question families ask every evening: What can I afford to cook with today?
Kenya has placed clean cooking among its national energy priorities. A 2026 Invest Kenya clean cooking sector report says more than 31 percent of Kenyan households primarily use clean cooking fuels and technologies, but the national figure hides major differences between urban and rural communities.
The transition must therefore be designed around affordability, local availability and the foods people actually prepare. A stove that is distributed but rarely used does not represent meaningful progress.
Siaya already has part of the answer
Siaya’s climate plan does not present one fuel as a universal solution. It proposes energy-efficient household and institutional cookstoves, briquettes, biogas, solar energy, LPG support and more sustainable charcoal production using invasive tree species.
That mixture is important because communities do not have identical needs.
Improved biomass stoves can reduce fuel consumption during the transition, although only stoves meeting strict emissions standards qualify as clean for health. Biogas may work well for households, farms and institutions with sufficient organic waste. Electric pressure cookers can reduce cooking time where electricity is reliable, while LPG can provide a fast alternative if cylinders, refills and safety support are accessible.
Agroforestry can also allow farmers to grow trees alongside crops, providing fruit, fodder, shade, timber and managed fuelwood. Efficient kilns can help charcoal producers earn more from less wood while reducing waste.
None of these options will succeed at scale without financing. Households may need affordable appliance loans, targeted subsidies or pay-as-you-go systems. Producers need training, secure access to tree resources and realistic routes into legal, sustainable businesses.
Siaya’s lesson for Africa
Nearly one billion people across Africa still lack access to clean cooking, according to the International Energy Agency. The agency estimates that polluting cooking fuels contribute to about 850,000 premature deaths on the continent each year.
Those numbers make charcoal appear to be a fuel problem. Siaya shows that it is also a problem of poverty, infrastructure, public health, gender inequality and rural employment.
Africa will not solve its charcoal dilemma by treating producers as criminals and consumers as careless. It will solve it by making cleaner energy more affordable than environmental destruction.
That means expanding reliable electricity, strengthening LPG and biogas supply chains, financing clean appliances and helping charcoal workers move into sustainable forestry, briquette production and other livelihoods.
It also means judging progress by more than the number of stoves distributed. Governments should measure whether families continue using the new technology, whether their energy costs fall, whether household air becomes safer and whether planted trees survive.
What Next?
Siaya has already identified many of the right interventions. The next test is whether those plans reach kitchens, farms, markets and charcoal-producing communities.
A household should not have to choose between preparing dinner and protecting the landscape on which its future depends. A charcoal producer should not have to destroy tomorrow’s source of income to survive today.
The charcoal stove in Siaya is not a symbol of backwardness. It is evidence of an unfinished energy transition.
Until clean cooking becomes affordable, reliable and capable of supporting local livelihoods, charcoal will continue to burn at the centre of Africa’s poverty and climate crisis.
