Energy poverty remains pervasive in sub-Saharan Africa, and there is active debate on whether access to basic financial services can provide a pathway out of it. This paper examines the extent to which households’ use of mobile banking services influences their adoption of clean cooking technologies. We utilize harmonized household panel data from eight West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) countries—Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Niger, Senegal, and Togo. To address potential endogeneity in households’ decision to use mobile banking, we implement three complementary identification strategies: correlated random effects models, entropy balancing, and instrumental variable approaches. The results consistently show that mobile banking use significantly increases households’ likelihood of adopting LPG for cooking, in both rural and urban areas. Building on this key finding, we further investigate the underlying mechanisms and find that mobile banking facilitates both formal and informal savings, enabling households to overcome the upfront costs of LPG adoption. These results underscore that digital financial inclusion and clean energy transition are mutually reinforcing policy objectives. We conclude that policies promoting mobile banking can play a pivotal role in accelerating the transition to clean cooking fuels and advancing progress toward SDG 7 in West Africa.
