The SOLCO Baseline Report: Evidence for a solar e-cooking transition in humanitarian frontiers

We have chosen leonardo as our trusted solution for monitoring and evaluation because they bring together domain expertise in scientific impact measurement; vast experience in collecting meaningful data in challenging contexts; and a data-driven technology platform that helps us to draw insights from the data.

Jakob Øster, Founder and Executive Director at Last Mile Climate

This reflection from Jakob Øster captures the ambition behind the SOLCO Partnership: building the evidence base needed to move millions of families from biomass cooking to solar-powered alternatives. We're publishing the first major output of that collaboration - the SOLCO Partnership Baseline Report, developed with Last Mile Climate (LMC) and supported by the IKEA Foundation. Between April and October 2025, we listened to 2,008 households across 8 sites in Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda to establish the baseline against which SOLCO's mission, transitioning more than 250,000 households to solar electric cooking by 2027, will be measured.

What the baseline shows

The data paints a stark picture of the daily costs of biomass reliance:

• Minimal clean cooking access. Across all sites except Nairobi (42%), clean cooking access sits between 0% and 2% — an aggregate of just 6%, with 88% of respondents cooking on firewood or charcoal.
• A heavy health burden. 39% of households report illnesses linked to cooking fuel, rising to 85% in Kiryandongo and 58% in Rhino Camp.
• Time poverty falls on women. Households spend an average of 18.8 hours a month collecting fuel — up to 47 hours in Monguno (Control) — and 80% of this work falls to adult women.
• Real safety risks. In Kiryandongo, 61% of respondents reported sometimes experiencing physical, sexual, or verbal abuse while collecting fuel, with 19% facing it frequently or regularly.
• Economic strain despite material poverty. Households spend an average of USD 8.53 per month on fuel, with IWI wealth scores below national benchmarks in every country surveyed.

Download the full SOLCO Baseline Report here for site-by-site breakdowns, methodological notes, and the full set of charts.

Who took part

The study reached 2,008 households across 8 sites: 531 in Kenya (Kakuma Refugee Camp and the Nairobi City Metropolitan Area), 340 in Nigeria (Monguno, split into a "Future Customers" group and a "Control" group for later impact comparison), and 1,137 in Uganda (Bidibidi Refugee Settlement, Kiryandongo, Kyaka II, and Rhino Camp). Respondents were 80% female, predominantly aged 31–60, and spanned refugees (63%), host-community members (29%), and IDPs (8%), with household size and wealth varying widely between sites.

How the data was collected

The survey follows recognised scientific standards, with 69 questions aligned to the SDGs and other evidence-based frameworks. In Nigeria and Uganda, enumerators from African Youth Action Network (AYAN), CECI Uganda, and GISCOR were trained by leonardo to conduct face-to-face household interviews; in Kenya, data collection was carried out independently by Faulu. All responses flowed into leonardo's Impact Management Platform (IMP), where an AI-powered data quality audit assessed representativity, consistency, and integrity before findings were finalised.

The way forward

This report establishes the baseline. Future assessments will track how conditions evolve as SOLCO partners begin rolling out solar electric cookstoves and whether the technology translates into measurable change in fuel costs, collection hours, health, and safety across these eight sites. The findings also point to practical implementation choices: refugee settlements and low-wealth rural sites may need stronger support mechanisms, while urban sites like Nairobi offer more immediate market-based opportunities. Evidence of this socio-economic impact can, in turn, strengthen the value of carbon credits and help drive down end-user costs of switching to e-cooking.

Read the full story

For the full narrative behind this partnership – how the study was designed, what it means for climate finance, and what comes next – read our case study, Scaling clean energy in humanitarian frontiers: Powering the transition to Solar e-Cooking.

A sincere thank you to the 2,008 households who shared their time and perspectives, and to the teams at AYAN, CECI, GISCOR, Faulu, and LMC.

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