Energy forum calls for clean cooking

Agnes Banda wakes up before sunrise, nearly four hours before her husband rises. Like most women in her neighbourhood in Blantyre rural, she walks about 90 minutes to a fast-disappearing indigenous forest where she spends no less than six hours searching for firewood.

Sweating profusely, her weekly routine brings to light women’s agony as forests are waning. The long walks will keep getting longer unless communities that rely on forests replenish the trees.

However, the silent crisis is that the long travels take these women and girls, sagging under the weight of firewood bundles, back to poorly ventilated kitchens where they cough, sneeze and pant-choked with smoke, soot and fumes that kills the softly.