Donors make it harder for Africans to avoid deadly wood smoke
Making the cleanest the enemy of the clean
YVONNE KAYAYA has never seen a gas cooker. In a poorly ventilated room in her home in Kasai, Congo, she stews potato leaves over a charcoal stove no bigger than a small stool—as generations before her have done. “I sometimes cook with firewood. If I have money, I always buy charcoal,” she says, unaware that both fuels are clogging up her lungs.
This article appeared in the Middle East & Africa section of the print edition under the headline “Fire escape”
Middle East & Africa May 8th 2021
- Somaliland, an unrecognised state, is winning friends abroad
- Donors make it harder for Africans to avoid deadly wood smoke
- Covid-19 has exposed Africa’s dependence on vaccines from abroad
- Houthi rebels look to take Marib, prolonging Yemen’s war
- Foreign workers in Qatar get some basic rights
- How Arab autocrats pick their opponents
More from Middle East & Africa
France’s bitter retreat from west Africa
The danger is a security void now opens up
Ahmed al-Sharaa declares himself president of Syria
But he has given no details of what kind of state he wants to build
The fall of Goma heralds more bloodshed in eastern Congo
Rwanda’s reckless invasion raises the risk of a wider war
Hamas talks a big game but is in chaos
Look beyond the latest bravado and brutality and it is bitterly split
Iran’s alarming nuclear dash will soon test Donald Trump
There is no plausible civilian use for the enhanced uranium Iran is producing
Syria’s new rulers say they are keen to integrate foreign fighters
Outsiders continue to see them as a threat