The smoke is one of the things I cannot easily forget. During an outreach visit to adolescent mothers and girls in a rural community in Malawi, I joined door-to-door visits to understand the realities families were facing. I expected to focus mainly on the issues affecting adolescent girls and young mothers. Instead, one household made me look at something as ordinary as cooking in a completely different way. At the household, firewood had been prepared for cooking. From a distance, it looked like an ordinary part of daily life. But as I approached the cooking area, I noticed smoke coming from the kitchen. I stopped and looked more closely. In that moment, I realized that cooking is not always as simple as it appears.
Behind an everyday meal can be a chain of decisions about what fuel a family can afford, who collects it, who cooks, how much time it takes and what people are exposed to while preparing food.
As a public health professional, I could not separate what I was seeing from the health implications of household air pollution. Exposure to smoke from polluting cooking fuels is associated with respiratory health risks and other serious health concerns. For women and girls who may spend considerable time around cooking spaces, this is not simply an energy issue. It is also a health and gender issue.
That encounter stayed with me. It made me ask: When we talk about energy access, are we asking whether people simply have energy, or are we asking whether they have access to energy that is safe, affordable and sustainable? That question changed how I understood clean cooking. I became more interested in clean cooking not simply as a technology, but as part of a wider energy transition. I also began to see myself more strongly as a clean-cooking advocate.
For many rural families, firewood and other traditional fuels are not necessarily a choice. They may be the most accessible or affordable options available. Women and girls can carry much of the responsibility for collecting fuel, preparing meals and cooking. This can create a hidden burden. Time spent collecting fuel and cooking is time that could otherwise be used for education, livelihoods, community participation or rest. At the same time, exposure to household air pollution can add health risks.
The more I reflected on what I had seen, the more I realised that energy poverty cannot be separated from questions of gender, health and inequality.
But I also learned that clean cooking cannot simply mean bringing a new stove into a community. A solution can only be meaningful if people can afford it, trust it, use it consistently and see it as appropriate for their lives. Communities need to be involved in deciding what works for them. Women and young people should not be treated only as beneficiaries; they can be advocates, entrepreneurs and leaders in the transition to cleaner energy.
This is where I see the connection between clean cooking and climate action. Climate change can sometimes feel like a distant global issue. But during that door-to-door visit, I began to understand that climate and energy questions are also household questions. They are connected to how families cook, how women spend their time, what energy they can afford and what kind of environment future generations will inherit.
For me, this is what a just energy transition should mean in the Global South. It should not be about simply transferring technologies from one place to another. It should involve listening to communities and recognising their knowledge, priorities and constraints. It should make cleaner energy accessible to people who are often most affected by energy poverty. It should also create opportunities. I imagine women becoming clean-cooking entrepreneurs and community advocates. I imagine young people developing livelihoods around clean energy. I imagine rural communities having a meaningful voice in the energy solutions introduced into their homes.
My experience during that outreach visit changed the way I see a cooking fire. l went to the household to engage with adolescent mothers and girls. I did not expect a smoky kitchen to leave me thinking about energy justice. But it did. I saw firewood prepared for cooking. I saw smoke coming from a kitchen. And I began to see the connections between something as ordinary as preparing a meal and much bigger questions about health, gender, poverty, climate and opportunity.
That experience taught me that energy access is not necessarily energy justice. For rural Malawi, a just energy transition should mean more than access to energy. It should mean access to cleaner, safer, affordable and sustainable energy, while ensuring that women, young people and communities have a voice in shaping the transition.
The transition should not simply change how people cook. It should change who has the opportunity, voice and power to shape a healthier and more sustainable energy future.