EnDev reaches over 36 million people and scales cleaner cooking solutions
EnDev’s report on its progress by 2025 highlights a year of strong progress. In 2025 alone, the programme reached 2.8 million people with modern energy solutions while demonstrating that energy access at scale can go hand in hand with higher-quality cooking solutions and greater outreach to vulnerable populations.
In its twenty years of implementation, Energising Development (EnDev) continued to demonstrate that sustainable energy access can be delivered at scale. In 2025, the programme facilitated access to modern energy for 2.8 million people across Africa and Asia, bringing the total number of people reached since 2005 to 36.7 million.
EnDev continued to deliver impact across its full portfolio—from electrification and clean cooking to support for businesses, social institutions and climate mitigation.
Delivering energy access at scale
2025 saw particularly strong progress in two areas that are critical to achieving Sustainable Development Goal 7: improving the quality of cooking solutions and ensuring that vulnerable populations are not left behind.
Scaling higher-tier cooking solutions
One of the strongest areas of progress in 2025 was higher-tier cooking. During the year, 634,880 people gained access to higher-tier cooking solutions such as eCookers, ethanol and biogas stoves, pellet gasifiers, and high performing biomass stoves. This brings the cumulative total to more than 1.65 million people.
Much of this growth was driven by eCooking. Once considered a niche technology, eCooking has become EnDev’s most widely adopted higher-tier cooking solution. In 2025, electric cooking technologies accounted for nearly three quarters of all higher-tier cooking results. Through targeted support to markets, businesses and consumers, EnDev scaled annual access to eCooking from around 3,000 people in 2020 to nearly 470,000 people in 2025, showing user preferences for faster, cleaner, and more aspirational cooking.
Reaching those furthest behind
At the same time, EnDev expanded its outreach to Leave No One Behind (LNOB) groups, like the poorest of the poor, at risk communities in fragile contexts, and other groups such as ethnic minorities. In 2025, EnDev reached more than 1 million people from such vulnerable and underserved populations, a 42% increase compared to 2024. This means that over a third of all people reached in 2025 belong to a Leave No One Behind (LNOB) group.
"Over the past 20 years, EnDev has shown that sustainable energy access can be delivered at scale. The results of 2025 are particularly encouraging because they demonstrate strong momentum in higher-tier cooking and eCooking, while reaching more people from vulnerable and underserved groups. This shows that scale, quality and inclusion can go hand in hand."
Noor Naqschbandi, Programme Director of EnDev
Driving impact through partnerships and markets
Much of this progress was achieved in Sub-Saharan Africa, where access to affordable, reliable and clean energy remains critical for improving livelihoods, strengthening resilience and creating economic opportunities. The results of 2025 show that expanding energy access at scale can go hand in hand with improving the quality of energy solutions and reaching those who are most often left behind.
Read the full EnDev Progress Report 2025 here.
