A typical example is cooking fire in Africa. This is a major cause of deforestation. The introduction of cheap e-methane is the best solution in sight. When off-grid, cooking with electricity does not make sense.
Methane doesn't make sense off grid, either. It's a gas and requires pipes to distribute efficiently. If you want to go off grid best to go up the chain a bit to propane or kerosene.
The 3rd world is much better off switching to solar. With an induction hob you can probably get away with 1000 Wh / day. A 200W panel, a 1000Wh battery, a 1500W inverter and a 1500W hob would cost around $500 and last 20 years. It can also keep a cell phone charged or used for refigeration instead or ...
OTOH, a propane burner might cost $20, but then you'll be spending $10/month on propane, and are super vulnerable to being cut off from your source.
Shouldn’t a higher priority still be expanding coverage of the grid? I’m sure there will always be some market for off-grid use cases but those should be a tiny niche.
Expanding the grid faces a totally different set of roadblocks than expanding individual household's capacity to generate power.
Much of the extant Third World is in its Third World-ey condition because of abysmal governance. That is usually accompanied by infestation of power and grid companies by grandnephews of top politicians etc.; those companies handle a lot of money, are highly centralized, and are thus a prime target for graft.
The bizarre story of South African ESKOM and poisoning of the director who was asked to reduce corruption comes to mind. [0]
That's gonna require you to jump through a lot of hoops and it might not even make economical sense at this point in time to build out the grid. It might not ever. You want to cook now, fuel solves that problem.
It's a complicated solution. On top of deployment of renewable energy production, it requires building efuel manufacturing and distribution network. Even if that's doable, it's not something that can be built immediately. And even if built, I don't see how it can compete in impoverished areas with just cutting down whatever is around.
And in the end, it only solves cooking. Electrification solves many more problems at once, and notably refrigeration.
