Kenya’s Cabinet Secretary for Energy, Charles Keter, has urged Kenyans to consider using electricity for cooking as the energy sector continues to see a drop in power usage attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Keter said modern electrical appliances made cooking easier and more efficient, and were less expensive.
“Households should also utilise electricity for cooking especially with the more advanced energy efficient cookers and other appliances available,” local Daily Nation newspaper quotes Keter.
The ministry of energy says Kenyans stand to benefit from cheaper electricity cost with more consumption of the commodity.
The Kenyan government has been on a deliberate expansion of electricity connections around the country to reach more Kenyans, especially in the rural areas.
The call to have Kenyans use electricity for cooking could however prove a hard task as only three percent of households own an electric cooking appliance, according to a Clean Cook survey conducted last year by the ministry.
The survey released in November 2019 indicated that Kenyan kitchens still largely run on wood fuel (charcoal and firewood), ranking top as the most commonly used primary cooking fuel with 75 percent of Kenyan households reportedly using it.
