BURN, a clean cookstove manufacturer, distributor, and carbon project developer, has secured a Sh650 million investment to scale up electric cooking in Kenya.

The funding by EDFI Management Company through the EU-backed Electrification Financing Initiative (ElectriFI), aims to enable more than 100,000 Kenyan households to adopt cleaner, more affordable cooking methods.

For years, charcoal, wood, and LPG have remained the default cooking fuels for millions of households across Kenya—despite more than 600 million Africans living within reach of electricity.

However, the prevailing high cost of electric cooking appliances has been the biggest challenge to most Kenyans accessing cleaner sources of energy for their cooking.

And that is the challenge BURN is seeking to tackle head-on with its ECOA Induction Cooker, an innovative, Internet-of-Things-enabled device designed and built in Africa.

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The cooker uses Pay-As-You-Cook (PAYC) technology, directly integrated with mobile money platforms and the ECOA Mobile App.

Households can pay in small instalments, gaining full ownership within a period of one year—making the shift to electric cooking both practical and more affordable to many.

Apart from reducing household energy bills by up to 60 per cent, BURN’s expansion has the potential to eliminate about 1.4 million tons of CO₂ emissions over the cookers’ lifetime.

BURN Founder and CEO Peter Scott noted that Kenya’s electricity grid is more than 90 per cent renewable yet more than 15 million households still cook with polluting fuels hence the investment will help to significantly close this gap.

“With over 40,000 ECOA induction cookers already in homes across East and West Africa, we’re proving that electric cooking—designed and built in Africa—can be the future of clean, affordable energy access at scale,” stated Scott.

The investment also supports broader goals of boosting local manufacturing and job creation along the value chain, positioning Kenya as a hub for clean energy innovation.

EDFI Management Company CEO Rodrigo Madrazo noted that access to clean and affordable cooking solutions plays a key role in enhancing sustainable development.

He intimated that the company’s investment underscores its commitment to driving private sector-led impact and accelerating the green transition in emerging markets like Kenya.

“Through ElectriFI, we are proud to support BURN’s pioneering work that not only improves household health and reduces environmental degradation but also strengthens local economies by creating manufacturing and distribution jobs across the value chain,” he said.

After distributing more than five million clean cookstoves across Africa, BURN is boosting Kenya’s transition to electric cooking, showcasing how locally driven innovation backed by smart financing can transform lives and the environment.