Rwanda has used the 21st Kwita Izina Gorilla Naming Ceremony to highlight the connection between conservation, rural livelihoods and climate finance, with DelAgua Chairman and Co-Founder Neil McDougall naming a mountain gorilla “Uruhembe”, meaning “at the forefront”, at a ceremony in Kinigi on September 4. McDougall’s selection as a namer reflects more than a decade of work in Rwanda through DelAgua’s Tubeho Neza clean-cooking programme, which has used carbon finance to distribute improved cookstoves to rural households while seeking to reduce pressure on forests and improve household health.
The ceremony, held at the foothills of Volcanoes National Park under the theme “Conservation is Life: Sustaining the Future”, brought together government officials, conservationists, business leaders, community representatives and international partners. Twenty-two baby mountain gorillas were named during this year’s ceremony, according to the Rwanda Development Board (RDB), which organises Kwita Izina with the Government of Rwanda.
McDougall was among a group of namers drawn from conservation, tourism, business, philanthropy, entertainment and public service. The RDB described him as the Founder and Chairman of DelAgua, highlighting his organisation’s work to expand access to clean cooking and improve livelihoods across Africa. The choice of McDougall is significant because Rwanda’s conservation model increasingly treats the protection of natural ecosystems as part of a wider economic and social development strategy. Kwita Izina itself has evolved from a gorilla-naming ceremony into an international platform for conservation, tourism and community development, with Rwanda seeking to demonstrate that protection of biodiversity can generate economic opportunities around protected areas.
For DelAgua, the connection is particularly direct. Its Tubeho Neza programme was launched in Rwanda in 2012 and has been built around the distribution of improved cookstoves to rural households that would otherwise struggle to afford cleaner and more efficient cooking technologies. The company’s current Rwanda project information says its stoves require 71% less wood than a traditional three-stone fire and have been associated with a 73% reduction in household air pollution under the conditions measured by the programme.
The scale of the programme has also created an employment component. DelAgua says it works with more than 7,000 Community Health Workers in Rwanda, who support stove distribution, household education and follow-up visits. Verra’s July 2026 case study on Tubeho Neza reports more than 8,000 local jobs created for community health workers and says the programme has reached 6.8 million people through the project.
The numbers matter because clean cooking remains one of Africa’s most persistent energy-access challenges. According to the World Health Organization, about 2.1 billion people globally still rely on polluting fuels and technologies for cooking, while household air pollution was responsible for an estimated 2.9 million premature deaths in 2021. Women and children carry a disproportionate share of the burden because they are more likely to spend time cooking and collecting fuel.
The situation is more acute in sub-Saharan Africa. WHO estimates that about 900 million people in the region lacked access to clean cooking in recent data, with only about 17% of the population having access to clean cooking technologies and fuels. The agency says sub-Saharan Africa is the only region where the number of people without access to clean cooking continues to rise.
That makes Rwanda’s experience relevant beyond its borders. Clean cooking is often discussed as an energy-access problem, but the consequences reach into public health, household economics, gender, forests and climate policy. Families dependent on wood-burning stoves face higher exposure to smoke while spending time and money securing fuel. At the same time, continued demand for fuelwood can add pressure to forests where alternative sources of energy are limited.
Tubeho Neza attempts to address several of these pressures through a single intervention. The improved stove does not eliminate biomass use, but its higher efficiency reduces the amount of wood required for cooking. DelAgua says the programme has prevented the harvest of about 3.1 million tonnes of wood in Rwanda, supporting the country’s wider reforestation and conservation objectives. Independent research provides additional context on the programme’s household-level effects. A 2020-2024 study published by DelAgua and conducted by researchers from the University of Lay Adventists of Kigali examined households in Kiyombe Sector in Nyagatare District, where firewood was the dominant cooking fuel. The study found that 95% of households in the sector relied on firewood, illustrating the continuing importance of biomass to rural energy systems even as Rwanda expands access to cleaner technologies.
The financing model behind the programme is equally important. Rather than relying exclusively on household payments, DelAgua has used revenues from independently verified carbon credits to finance the distribution and ongoing support of cookstoves. That approach reflects a broader shift in how climate finance is being considered across Africa. Carbon markets can provide an additional revenue stream for projects that generate measurable emissions reductions, potentially allowing interventions that would otherwise be unaffordable for low-income households to operate at scale.
DelAgua’s model has also intersected with the development of international carbon-market rules. In 2023, the company announced that its Rwanda clean-cooking programme had received corresponding-adjustment tags for its Verra carbon credits after Rwanda’s designated national authority, the Rwanda Environment Management Authority, signed Letters of Authorisation. DelAgua described the development as an important step in aligning the project with Article 6-related requirements.
That evolution is relevant because the future of clean-cooking finance will depend not only on the volume of carbon credits generated but also on their credibility, environmental integrity and the benefits delivered to households. Investors and buyers increasingly face questions over whether carbon projects produce genuine additional emissions reductions and whether communities receive meaningful social and economic benefits. Rwanda’s approach provides a useful case study in that respect. The country’s conservation model has long sought to link protected ecosystems with tourism and local economic activity. The mountain gorillas themselves have become a major component of Rwanda’s tourism economy, while the government has increasingly emphasised the role of communities living around national parks.
The RDB says more than 600 mountain gorillas live in the Virunga Massif, with Rwanda home to nearly one-third of that population. Across the Virunga Massif and Bwindi ecosystem, the mountain gorilla population exceeds 1,060 individuals. That conservation progress has economic implications. Gorilla tourism generates revenue for Rwanda while supporting accommodation, transport, guiding, food services and other businesses around the tourism economy. It also creates an economic rationale for protecting habitats that might otherwise face competing demands for land and natural resources.
The 2026 Kwita Izina programme made that connection explicit. RDB said the ceremony was designed not only to celebrate the survival and growth of the mountain gorilla population but also to demonstrate how conservation can create economic opportunities and improve livelihoods for communities around national parks. The presence of business leaders among this year’s namers reinforces that broader framing. Eng. Ahmed Sadek Elsewedy, Chairman of Elsewedy Electric; Olivier Granet, Managing Partner and Co-CEO of Kasada Capital Management; Susan Hollern, Founder and President of Hope Haven Rwanda; Rwandan musician Israel Mbonyi; filmmaker Marie-Clémentine Dusabejambo and other conservation and public-sector figures joined McDougall at the ceremony.
The diversity of participants reflects the increasingly interconnected nature of conservation finance. Protecting ecosystems requires public policy and scientific expertise, but it also depends on tourism investment, infrastructure, community livelihoods and private-sector capital. For rural households, however, the practical benefits remain central. A more efficient cooking technology can reduce the amount of time and money spent obtaining fuel, while lower exposure to smoke can improve household health. DelAgua’s model also creates local employment through community-based distribution and household support. Those effects are particularly important for women and children, who are often responsible for collecting firewood and cooking. WHO identifies these groups as among those most exposed to household air pollution and the associated health risks.
The climate implications are also broader than the carbon accounting attached to a cookstove. Reducing wood demand can help reduce pressure on forests, while improved combustion efficiency can lower emissions from household energy use. Where forest conservation is linked to biodiversity protection, the benefits can extend from carbon reduction to habitat preservation. For Rwanda, those connections support the government’s wider conservation narrative. The country’s experience suggests that biodiversity protection and rural development do not necessarily have to be treated as competing policy priorities when interventions are designed around shared economic incentives.
The challenge is scaling that model without weakening its financial and environmental integrity. Carbon finance can mobilise capital at a scale that conventional development budgets may struggle to match, but its durability depends on continued demand for high-quality credits and robust measurement of project outcomes.
DelAgua’s experience also illustrates the importance of implementation infrastructure. The physical stove is only one component of the programme. Household education, follow-up visits, community health workers and monitoring are needed to ensure that technologies are adopted and continue to be used. That lesson has relevance for other African countries confronting the same clean-cooking deficit. DelAgua says its Live Well programme has expanded beyond Rwanda into The Gambia, Sierra Leone and Uganda, with more than two million improved cookstoves distributed across the four countries. The company’s stated approach is to use carbon finance to support free cookstove provision to rural households that cannot readily afford the transition.
Rwanda’s experience is therefore becoming part of a broader African conversation about whether climate finance can simultaneously support emissions reductions, household welfare, ecosystem protection and local economic activity. The naming of Uruhembe at Kwita Izina carries a symbolic connection to that wider agenda. The gorilla was named “at the forefront”, while the programme surrounding the ceremony placed conservation at the centre of Rwanda’s development narrative. For clean-cooking initiatives such as Tubeho Neza, the practical question is whether that connection can continue to translate into finance, jobs, healthier households and lower pressure on natural resources.
For Africa, where clean-cooking access remains among the continent’s largest energy and public-health gaps, Rwanda’s experience demonstrates why the transition cannot be treated simply as an emissions problem. It is also a question of household economics, health systems, women’s time, rural employment, forest management and the credibility of the carbon markets increasingly being asked to finance development.
The significance of McDougall’s recognition at Kwita Izina therefore extends beyond the ceremony itself. It places clean cooking within the same conservation conversation as the protection of one of Africa’s most closely monitored endangered species, illustrating how climate finance, community development and biodiversity policy are increasingly being considered as interconnected components of sustainable development.
