The kitchen is an essential unit of any household. It regulates not only everyday cooking activities but also family interactions, gender dynamics and determines food choices, fuel and quality of health. The kitchen is a space where the energy of life, i.e. food, is prepared, but is also a space which can take lives if there is no access to clean and reliable energy. According to the International Energy Agency report (2019), one-third of the world’s population (around 2.6 billion people) do not have access to clean cooking facilities. Daily exposure to toxic smoke from traditional cooking practices is one of the world’s major yet least understood killers, causing 2.5 million premature deaths annually (World Health Organization report, 2016).

Reducing the household energy access gap is a priority within the Sustainable Development Goals. The challenges in Africa and South Asia are severe – only 29% and 35% of the population, respectively, have access to clean cooking. In Malawi more than 97% of the population rely on firewood/charcoal and more than 90% of households use traditional biomass for cooking in Bangladesh (Clean Cooking Alliance). To enhance access to clean energy and achieve SDG7, a number of initiatives have been undertaken by the Malawian and Bangladeshi governments and international organisations. These initiatives have mostly given attention to improving technical aspects of cooking stoves and enhancing financial accessibility to clean energy. A major drawback of these initiatives has involved ignoring the cultural aspects of cooking and relations between people, the kitchen space and everyday cooking practices.

Cooking is an ingrained and profoundly cultural experience, and the kitchen is the space where these practices arise, live and are passed down over generations in any culture. Introducing new technology without having cultural insight leads to failure. Thus, taking ‘kitchen’ as a unit of analysis and ‘kitchen life’ as an active agent, this research will develop a socio-cultural understanding of everyday kitchen life of these two countries, and will provide a firm ground to develop subsequent research on access to sustainable cooking energy, one of the most challenging issues of our time.