Tanzania plans solar power and clean cooking for 1.4 million poor households
The Light to Learn initiative, presented at the COP31 climate conference in Antalya, Türkiye, is aimed especially at girls whose homework is squeezed out by household chores.
Tanzania wants to bring solar energy and cleaner cooking technologies to approximately 1.4 million vulnerable households through a proposed initiative called Light to Learn. Mr John Mapunda, a senior community development officer at the Ministry of Community Development, Gender, Women and Special Groups, presented the plan at the Tanzania Pavilion on November 10, 2026.
Mapunda used the example of a 12-year-old girl supported by the Tanzania Social Action Fund (TASAF). She fetches water, collects firewood, cooks and cares for younger siblings and sick relatives, often finishing after dark, when she may have to study by kerosene lamp while her brother has finished his homework in daylight. The initiative's message is that access to light is a right to education.
The proposal uses existing social protection structures to reach the poorest families and treats household electrification, clean cooking and gender equality as one intervention rather than separate concerns.
Why it mattersPoor households with no electricity rely on kerosene lamps, and the plan would replace them with solar power and cleaner cooking for about 1.4 million households.