Morning Briefing

The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves "launched a campaign in Nigeria on Tuesday aimed at preventing deaths due to toxic smoke from rudimentary cookstoves, one of the developing world's worst public health threats," Agence France-Presse reports. In Nigeria, "an estimated 95,000 people die each year due to such toxic smoke, the highest number of deaths on the continent," the news service writes, adding the new Nigerian Alliance for Clean Cookstoves will aim to distribute "10 million clean cookstoves by 2020, beginning with half a million within the next 12 months." According to AFP, "U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria Terence McCulley said his government has committed up to $105 million over the next five years for the project" (3/20).