Clean Cooking Alliance’s New Monitoring and Evaluation Data Highlight Contributions to the Sector
WASHINGTON, D.C., August 24 – The Clean Cooking Alliance (CCA) has released the first annual report on its Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) Framework. Launched in 2020, the M&E Framework provides clear, systematic guidance on how CCA’s work is measured and how learning will be integrated across the organization and beyond. CCA’s new M&E report – the first to analyze CCA’s work through a defined and calculated system of standard indicator tracking – underscores CCA’s contributions to building a thriving, global clean cooking sector.
“Monitoring and evaluation efforts are critical to our goals of strengthening and supporting the clean cooking sector,” said Dymphna van der Lans, CEO of the Clean Cooking Alliance. “This report is an essential step for CCA as a learning organization and establishes the scale and importance of the work we accomplished in 2020.”
The report’s standard indicator data illustrate the impact of CCA’s work to drive consumer demand, mobilize investment, and foster industry growth through effective policies. The data include indicators such as the number of enterprises in the clean cooking industry, the revenue generated by CCA-supported enterprises, and the number of national policies and strategies supportive of the clean cooking sector (in countries receiving CCA support).
Encouragingly, CCA’s standard indicator data on the clean cooking industry largely indicate growth. For example, there were 140 active enterprises that either applied to CCA for funding or had other interactions with CCA in the last three years. Data from a subset of these enterprises showed a 75 percent growth in fundraising between 2018 and 2019, resulting in a total of $70 million in investment in 2019. Moreover, these 140 enterprises do not represent the full sector; moving forward, CCA plans to identify and include more enterprises in this dataset.
CCA also collected data on its work to support the growth of clean cooking enterprises. Of the 17 enterprises supported by CCA through financial or technical assistance in 2020 – a nearly threefold increase compared to the number of CCA-supported enterprises in 2019 – 12 submitted information to be used as standard indicator data. These data show that, in 2019, CCA-supported enterprises generated revenues totaling nearly USD $23 million and employed about 1,800 people across 16 countries. These enterprises sold about 390,000 stoves and 68.9 megajoules of fuel (including briquettes, biomass pellets, and liquefied petroleum gas). Furthermore, sales growth was positive for both stoves and fuels from 2018 to 2019, increasing 13.8 percent and 54 percent, respectively.
While much of CCA’s work on increasing consumer demand for clean cooking in 2020 was focused on program design, the organization was still able to collect standard indicator data from its baseline measurement work in Haiti. The data reveal that, in urban Haiti, six percent of the target population can identify an improved stove, and 74 percent of people using improved stoves would recommend them to others. CCA’s work in Haiti incorporates learnings from the organization’s earlier demand-generation activities in India and Nepal, which reached 1.7 million people as of 2019.
In terms of strengthening enabling environments, the report shows that 36 national policies supportive of the clean cooking sector have been implemented in countries where CCA focuses attention, with gender appearing in nearly half of these policies. In 2020, CCA complemented its support for policy development by engaging with key stakeholders from 24 countries, including partners from government ministries, national standards bodies, development organizations, and stove-testing laboratories. Additionally, CCA held 14 events and workshops attended by 1,248 people, and surpassed 2020 nonprofit benchmarks in social and digital media audience engagement.
Finally, standard indicator data on generating research, evidence, and learning reveal the critical knowledge generation and management role that CCA plays in the broader clean cooking sector. In 2020, CCA authored 10 publications and provided input to 14 more. CCA’s digital resource database is visited by users from around the world, with 40 percent coming from Africa, Asia, or South America.
CCA will continue using and improving its M&E Framework to better advance its mission of achieving universal access to clean cooking. As CCA’s strategy and role in the sector evolves, including through activities like the Clean Cooking Systems Strategy, the M&E Framework will be revisited and revised accordingly.
To see the complete list of CCA’s standard indicator data, please see the summary table at the end of this report.
