Sustainable energy services provider C-Quest Capital has signed a deal with Shell Eastern Trading to fund the generation of more than 60 million carbon credits using clean cookstoves in Africa.

The agreement will see the two companies deploy clean and efficient cookstoves to 1.5 million rural households across Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Uganda and Kenya.

"The agreement with Shell allows the lives of some of the poorest communities in the world to be significantly transformed for the long-term," said C-Quest Capital CEO and founder Ken Newcombe.

"It is about more than just reducing emissions – it's about improving the health and well-being of women, who are the key agents of social and economic development in rural Africa. Climate finance is just the means to a development end," he said in a statement April 16.

Over the next decade, the investment will deliver over 60 million high-quality carbon credits with verified Sustainable Development Contributions to the voluntary carbon market, the Washington DC-based company said.

Emissions reductions will be generated through reducing the amount of unsustainably harvested firewood and switching to entirely sustainable sources of woody biomass fuels, it said.

The project is expected to improve the health and wellbeing of over 7 million people, with the greatest benefits flowing to women and girls who will spend less time carrying firewood over long distances and to infants who will be less exposed to toxic air pollution from open fires, C-Quest Capital said.

The project with Shell has been proposed under the Verified Carbon Standard operated by Washington-DC-based standards setter Verra.

The project is the second leg of a three-pronged program to improve the lives of low-income communities across sub-Saharan Africa at scale. The first was signed in March with Macquarie Group to fund the distribution of clean cookstoves to one million households in Malawi, Zambia and Tanzania.