GS4424 VPA4 African Cookstoves and Water Programme

Audit Analysis

The African Cookstoves and Water Programme (VPA4) in Rwanda has a VVB-confirmed investment additionality test and a conservative FNRB of 0.98, but is undermined by a project-specific baseline, a 0% leakage deduction that contradicts an earlier monitoring report, seven material findings, and a large gap between the assumed 99% usage rate and the 52.74% verified by SustainCERT. The low extraction confidence and multiple cross-document contradictions reduce confidence in the overall data reliability.

Project Description

Red Flags

• ⚠Usage rate assumed at 99% in the PDD but verified at only 52.74% by SustainCERT in the 2023 verification report — a gap of nearly 47 percentage points that raises questions about the robustness of the ex-ante ERR estimate.
• ⚠Leakage treatment is inconsistent: the 2020 monitoring report describes leakage as 'quantified' while the 2023 monitoring report states it is 'deemed negligible' with a 0% deduction, with no reconciliation provided.
• ⚠Seven material findings were logged by the VVB, including inconsistencies in the number of improved cookstove units across monitoring report sections and the ER sheet, and an outdated tracking database used for random sampling.
• ⚠Minimum extraction confidence is rated low, indicating at least one key document was poorly readable, which limits the reliability of the structured data used for scoring.

Credit Vintages