‘My mother died as a smoker when she had never smoked’: A son’s grief over silent energy crisis
Zizi Afrique Foundation executive director John Mugo at the Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development on April 25, 2024.
What you need to know:
- Dr John Mugo has laid bare the deadly cost of household air pollution after his non-smoking mother died with lungs damaged by decades of firewood smoke.
- His story underscores how energy poverty continues to silently claim lives, particularly among elderly rural women.
- A new report by the National Gender and Equality Commission reveals that despite high awareness of green energy, most Kenyan households still rely on firewood and charcoal.
She never smoked a cigarette, but her lungs told a different story. The doctor pulled Dr John Mugo aside into a separate room, away from his ailing mother. The question that followed would haunt him for years. “Has your mother ever been a smoker?”
Dr Mugo was appalled. His mother was a stalwart Catholic. She had never touched a cigarette in her 78 years of life. But what the doctor showed him next left an indelible mark on his memory—an X-ray revealing lungs ravaged as if their owner had smoked for two decades.
“She died as a smoker when she had never smoked,” Dr Mugo told a gathering in Nairobi last week during the launch of a new report by the National Gender and Equality Commission (NGEC).
His mother had suffered from asthma. For years, she had cooked over an open fire in their rural home, inhaling wood smoke day after day. Five years ago, an asthma attack claimed her life. Dr Mugo is the executive director of Zizi Afrique Foundation. “My mother died five years ago. But I am still mourning,” he said.
The tragedy carries an additional sting of regret. Dr Mugo had bought his mother a gas cooker. He regularly sent money home to his parents in the village. But his mother had no control over how the household funds were spent, and so she continued cooking with firewood. “If my mother was in charge of the money, she would have refilled the gas continually,” he reflected.
His clarion call is urgent and direct: “Examine the kitchen being used. Some interventions may be small, like cooking outside. As we speak today, someone is dying.”
His deeply personal testimony came during the launch of the Mainstreaming Equality and Inclusion in Green Energy report—an assessment of the uptake of green energy by Special Interest Groups in Kenya. The two-year study, conducted between September 2020 and December 2021, examined how the elderly, women, youth, people with disabilities, and marginalised communities are accessing clean energy solutions.
NGEC chairperson Rehema Dida Jaldesa noted that these groups face unique hurdles. “These groups face unique challenges in accessing resources and opportunities, making them particularly vulnerable to the negative impacts of energy poverty," she stated.
She, too, knows this reality intimately. Her own mother still cooks with firewood in their rural home. “My mother is in the village. She is still using firewood. I have tried moving her to Nairobi, but she has refused. In the remote rural area, gas and electricity connectivity remains impossible for now,” she narrated.
The study, conducted by a team comprising officials from NGEC, the Ministry of Energy, and the Ministry of Environment, covered 10 counties, including Kiambu, Murang'a, Kajiado, Machakos, Garissa, Kakamega, Uasin Gishu, and Nyamira. Its findings paint a troubling picture of Kenya's energy landscape.
Despite the majority of respondents—84 per cent—reporting having heard about green energy, firewood remained the leading fuel used, at 20 per cent. Charcoal followed at 17.7 per cent, electricity at 16 per cent, and solar at 13 per cent. Biogas lagged far behind at just 0.2 per cent.
When asked to identify forms of green energy, solar was the most commonly mentioned at 22 per cent, followed by liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) at 18 per cent. Other forms cited included hydroelectricity, biogas, briquettes, geothermal, and ethanol—with geothermal and ethanol the least recognised at 7.0 per cent and 4.0 per cent respectively.
The gender dimensions of energy use emerged clearly. Among all green energy users in the year preceding the research, women constituted the majority at 37 per cent, followed by youth at 25 per cent, older members of society at 11 per cent, and persons with disabilities at 3.0 per cent.
When broken down by usage rates within each group, minority and marginalised communities recorded the highest proportion of green energy users at 90 per cent, followed by persons with disabilities at 81 per cent, youth at 77 per cent, women at 72 per cent, and older members of society at 67 per cent.
Education proved a significant factor in green energy awareness. Degree holders recorded the highest awareness levels at 97 per cent, followed by diploma holders at 93 per cent. Those with no formal education had the lowest awareness at just 25.4 per cent.
Geographically, Kiambu County reported the highest level of green energy awareness, followed by Kakamega, Uasin Gishu, and Kajiado. Machakos recorded the lowest awareness levels, with some respondents stating they had never heard of green energy at all.
Perhaps the most concerning finding was the rate of abandonment. Only 28 per cent of respondents had consistently used green energy, while more than half—72 per cent—reported switching from green energy back to non-renewable sources. The reasons were practical: unavailability topped the list at 25 per cent, followed closely by unaffordability at 24 per cent. Respondents also cited unreliability, inability to meet their needs, and limited functionality. A small proportion—0.7 per cent—disclosed that their partner or household members simply did not prefer green energy.
While 93 per cent of respondents expressed intention to switch to green energy in future, 7.0 per cent said they had no intention whatsoever of ever doing so. Their reasons, accounting for 81 per cent of responses, included concerns that green energy was not safe, not readily available, expensive, and not dependable. Other barriers cited included inconvenience, time consumption, the need for technical skills, equipment breaking down easily, difficulty of use by women and children, and lack of household acceptance.
The bigger picture is stark. Firewood and charcoal combined account for 66.7 per cent of household cooking fuel in Kenya. Biogas and electricity each account for less than 1.0 per cent.
Experts warn that continued reliance on such inefficient and unsafe energy sources will hasten the depletion of forests, accelerate global warming, cause preventable deaths among women and children, and rob women of countless productive hours.
