Charcoal sales logged by Tanzania's forestry agency climbed from about 3.5 billion shillings in March 2023 to roughly 7.6 billion in March 2025, more than doubling during the same three years in which the government was handing out cleaner stoves, banning wood fuel in large institutions, and promising to move 80 percent of households onto modern cooking by 2034, which means the fuel officials call dirty is currently selling better than it ever has.
Firewood tells the opposite story, with recorded sales slipping from around 165 million shillings in March 2023 to about 126 million two years later. People are not all cooking cleaner. Plenty are simply trading up from sticks to charcoal.
Clean cooking access has genuinely moved, from under 7 percent in 2021 to roughly 28 percent by the middle of 2026. That gain is real, and it sits mostly in cities and in state kitchens. The charcoal economy underneath has barely flinched.
Institutions were the one place demand truly collapsed. All 129 mainland prisons moved to gas, biogas, or electricity between March 2025 and March 2026, and roughly 1,350 public institutions feeding more than 100 people each did the same. Every prison had been burning about 100 tonnes of charcoal a year.
No national scheme compensates the sellers for that lost income. The clean cooking strategy carries a price tag near 1.8 billion dollars over ten years, roughly 180 million annually, and almost all of it points at the buying end. None of that shows up in the government's steady push to put safer stoves inside Tanzanian kitchens, which counts units delivered rather than sacks left unsold.
Charcoal work is also flexible in a way formal jobs are not. You can burn a kiln between harvests, or sell a few bags when school fees fall due.
The stove itself is the harder wall. A basic charcoal burner runs about 5,000 shillings, while a single-burner gas set costs roughly 60,000 before you buy any gas at all. Charcoal also lets you spend 1,500 shillings today and nothing tomorrow, which is why it stays cheaper per meal than gas for households paid day by day.
The government has attacked that gap with cylinder subsidies of 50 percent in rural areas and 20 percent in towns, aimed at 452,000 cylinders. Refills still arrive as one lump sum. That single feature keeps millions of households loyal to the sack.
Briquette firms already turn rice husks, coconut shells, and sawdust into fuel that burns in the stoves people already own. European-funded work running to 2027 splits its money between growing that market and putting village forests under managed harvesting, so wood income survives without stripping the land.
Tanzania still loses around 469,000 hectares of forest a year. Kiln crews will keep cutting while charcoal remains the only asset within reach, and no stove handout changes that arithmetic on its own.
Firewood tells the opposite story, with recorded sales slipping from around 165 million shillings in March 2023 to about 126 million two years later. People are not all cooking cleaner. Plenty are simply trading up from sticks to charcoal.
Clean cooking access has genuinely moved, from under 7 percent in 2021 to roughly 28 percent by the middle of 2026. That gain is real, and it sits mostly in cities and in state kitchens. The charcoal economy underneath has barely flinched.
The people who move charcoal for a living
Dar es Salaam alone gets through more than 500,000 bags a month, and Mwanza and Arusha take up to 200,000 each. Behind those numbers sit hundreds of thousands of kiln workers, truck drivers, wholesalers, and women selling by the bucket outside their gates. Every one of them has a customer today.Institutions were the one place demand truly collapsed. All 129 mainland prisons moved to gas, biogas, or electricity between March 2025 and March 2026, and roughly 1,350 public institutions feeding more than 100 people each did the same. Every prison had been burning about 100 tonnes of charcoal a year.
No national scheme compensates the sellers for that lost income. The clean cooking strategy carries a price tag near 1.8 billion dollars over ten years, roughly 180 million annually, and almost all of it points at the buying end. None of that shows up in the government's steady push to put safer stoves inside Tanzanian kitchens, which counts units delivered rather than sacks left unsold.
Charcoal work is also flexible in a way formal jobs are not. You can burn a kiln between harvests, or sell a few bags when school fees fall due.
Gas costs more per meal than charcoal
Charcoal delivers heat at around 89 shillings a megajoule. Cooking gas costs about 123, and electricity about 141. Nobody living close to the edge ignores a gap like that.The stove itself is the harder wall. A basic charcoal burner runs about 5,000 shillings, while a single-burner gas set costs roughly 60,000 before you buy any gas at all. Charcoal also lets you spend 1,500 shillings today and nothing tomorrow, which is why it stays cheaper per meal than gas for households paid day by day.
The government has attacked that gap with cylinder subsidies of 50 percent in rural areas and 20 percent in towns, aimed at 452,000 cylinders. Refills still arrive as one lump sum. That single feature keeps millions of households loyal to the sack.
Briquettes and village forests point the exit
The clearest route out treats charcoal makers as suppliers rather than culprits. In June 2026, the state opened a 3 billion shilling subsidy for young people, women, and people with special needs producing improved stoves and alternative charcoal, with a further 10 billion set aside for research and innovation in the new financial year.Briquette firms already turn rice husks, coconut shells, and sawdust into fuel that burns in the stoves people already own. European-funded work running to 2027 splits its money between growing that market and putting village forests under managed harvesting, so wood income survives without stripping the land.
Tanzania still loses around 469,000 hectares of forest a year. Kiln crews will keep cutting while charcoal remains the only asset within reach, and no stove handout changes that arithmetic on its own.
