Urban heat, gender and cooking in Dar es Salaam's informal settlements

When cities get hot, the most vulnerable communities are hit hardest: people living in informal settlements must endure the heat in overcrowded, poorly built houses, often on low-lying land with few open spaces or infrastructure. They don't have the money to pay for cooling; even running one fan can pose a financial challenge.

City planners and policymakers increasingly recognise the threat that extreme heat poses to people in informal settlements. However, it's essential to also recognise and address a significant heat risk for women in informal settlements: indoor heat exposure related to cooking and fuel choices.

Methodology

This case study forms part of a broader study aimed at advancing gender-responsive climate data collection, knowledge and evidence-generation and its ownership by grassroots movements. It has been jointly prepared by IIED and the Tanzanian NGO Centre for Community Initiatives (CCI), members of the Tanzania Federation for the Urban Poor (TFUP) and residents of the informal settlement of Kombo.

Researchers provided householders with small 'iButton' heat sensors and combined quantitative heat data with community surveys, focus groups and interviews. We aimed to gather evidence and insights on chronic heat exposure among Kombo's residents, especially women, as a basis for engaging with policymakers and to inform household and community climate adaptation actions.

Background

Kombo in Dar es Salaam is home to approximately 20,000 people. More than half of the houses are on low-lying land, and homes are regularly flooded.

Dar es Salaam is hot and humid: the annual mean temperature is around 27°C, with peaks of up to 34.6°C in hotter months. Climate change projections suggest the city will see rising temperatures, including more frequent and longer heatwaves.

Kombo's densely packed, low-quality houses with metal roofs offer no respite from the heat, and the 'heat island' effect created by heat-absorbing building materials further raises temperatures. Humidity levels range from 77 to 86%, making heat far harder to endure.

Issues

In this environment, cooking over open fires indoors multiplies the heat stress for Kombo's residents, especially women.

Gender dynamics mean that women are expected to cook, and they regularly spend long hours near open fires during the hottest parts of the day.
Most households don't have dedicated kitchen spaces; nearly a third of residents cook in unventilated, shared corridors or in living rooms, starting early in the morning and often continuing until late into the evening. 

The most commonly used charcoal and firewood stoves generate intense radiant heat, while poor ventilation traps heat and smoke. Tightly spaced, overcrowded buildings mean there is little respite overnight as indoor temperatures stay high.

Charcoal and wood are the worst fuel options, both in terms of radiant heat and pollution, and their contributions to climate change. However, women's choice of cooking fuel is shaped by economic constraints and gendered household financial arrangements.

Some 64% of Kombo households earn less than 150,000 Tanzanian shillings (US$60) per month. Men traditionally give women a small daily budget, and women buy charcoal and wood, which are available in small quantities. Surveys showed that 82% of families use charcoal, 13.1% use liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and 4% use wood. Cleaner options such as LPG or electric stoves require too much up-front expenditure.

Women expressed concern that being required to spend more on cleaner cooking fuels would leave them with less to spend on food, school fees or rent.

These concerns highlight the need for gender-responsive energy programmes that directly target women through financing, training and adaptable ownership models. Women say that policymakers need to recognise women as the primary energy users, not just beneficiaries.

Impacts

Heat impacts extend beyond physical and health effects to include significant social, economic and financial consequences. Women's unpaid labour intensifies under hot conditions, reinforcing gender inequalities and limiting their opportunities to earn money.

Both genders suffer from poor sleep and stress, but the pressure on women is higher because of their domestic responsibilities and limited mobility. For women looking after restless children and elderly relatives, nighttime heat increases exhaustion. Unlike men, they can't sleep outside or wear lighter clothing because of safety concerns and local social norms.

Women and children face the greatest indoor heat exposure, and suffer dehydration, respiratory illness, skin rashes and poor sleep. Some 52.6% of residents report heat-related discomfort due to sleeping in overheated dwellings. Pregnant women and infants are especially vulnerable.

Many women, some 46%, earn extra income by working as food vendors – often cooking food. Extreme heat forces them to close early or take breaks, reducing their earnings. Lack of refrigeration means food spoils more quickly, while the cost of running fans increases financial pressures.

Group discussions showed that children and adults fall ill during hot seasons, and healthcare expenses are a heavy burden, given that 88.6% of residents lack health insurance.

Overall, women's unpaid labour intensifies under hot conditions, reinforcing gender inequalities and limiting their opportunities.

Responses

Women in Kombo recognise the benefits of cleaner cooking, but social and financial pressures limit their ability to take action.

Heat discomfort during cooking is viewed as a normal part of women's role, not a problem requiring investment. This normalisation of heat stress means women feel pressure to endure heat rather than demand change.

Responses are also constrained by economic patterns: most householders rent rooms to other families as an additional source of income. Many families live in one room and share cooking spaces in narrow corridors. Residents use almost every available piece of land or space to construct rooms to rent. A separate kitchen is seen as wasted space.

Focus group participants highlighted the gap between government policies and the realities of informal settlements:

Pathways to action

The solutions below, developed with Kombo residents, TFUP and CCI, emphasise the need for community participation to inform inclusive and targeted interventions.

At the household and community level

• Individual households can take incremental action to reduce heat and boost clean cooking. Such actions could be scaled through microfinancing or savings groups.
• Residents believe that government and private-sector awareness campaigns could encourage residents to consider cleaner energy and address health and heat risks.

At the local government level

• The Local Government Authority (LGA), through the office of the director of Dar es Salaam City Council, should organise dialogues to ensure meaningful community engagement and awareness of the opportunities provided by the government to support cleaner energy, such as subsidised clean energy regional and municipal loans.
• Local government should prioritise reducing market tariffs for cleaner cooking for food vendors operating in centres or markets, for example, the Kwasimba and Vingunguti markets near Kombo settlement.
• The LGA should support clean energy alternatives to charcoal, such as briquette production at the grassroots level of the community.

At the national level

Tanzania has made ambitious commitments to cleaner cooking via a range of policies. The National Renewable Energy Strategy 2024-34 and the National Clean Cooking Strategy of 2024-34 aim to increase access to clean cooking fuels from 16% to 75% by 2030.

Residents say heat mitigation through cleaner energy is most scalable when individual behaviour change is reinforced by collective infrastructure and enabling government policy frameworks, rather than relying solely on household efforts.

Additional priority actions include:

• Make clean fuels affordable: subsidise LPG starter kits and reduce taxes on cleaner cooking appliances
• Work with women's federations to provide loans or grants for women entrepreneurs to adopt LPG/electric pressure cookers
• Support off-grid/solar-powered cooking options and improve electricity affordability through subsidies, and
• Use results-based financing for clean energy companies.

Recommendations for global researchers and donors

• Do more research, for example, expand iButton data collection in kitchens and heat/air sensor monitoring to build evidence for advocacy.
• Some global programmes fund stoves or pilot projects; instead, funders should invest in the entire clean cooking ecosystem (fuel supply chains, distribution, maintenance). Funding for long-term adoption support, not just equipment distribution, is important because most women return to charcoal when clean fuels become unaffordable or unavailable.
• Instead of treating women solely as victims, funders should support women-owned LPG-distribution businesses by providing working capital and microfinance for women. Funding training in clean energy entrepreneurship will reduce dependence while increasing women's economic agency.
• Integrate heat reduction into clean energy programming: most clean cooking programmes focus on air pollution, health and emissions. Global funders should explicitly integrate urban heat reduction and link clean cooking to improved housing ventilation and cooling. This will reframe clean cooking as both a health and heat-resilience strategy.

Authors

With thanks to the contributions of the Tanzania Federation of the Urban Poor (TFUP), Wayne Shand, Enzo Leone, Karen Wong Pérez and Aarifa Muhammed (all IIED) to this case study.