The electricity access deficit is more pronounced in sub-Saharan Africa than in any other region globally, where despite recent progress in transmission and distribution capacities, around 580 million people still lacked access to electricity in 2019.1 And those that do have access are often burdened with poor reliability. As of April 2022, a survey found that 43% of Africans reported having access to a reliable supply of electricity, up by only three percentage points since 2015, and about 28% of connected households have power half the time, occasionally, or never.2 The latest World Bank Enterprise Surveys data suggests that customers across sub-Saharan Africa experienced an average of nine outages per month, each lasting an average of 5.7 hours.3 Yet, understanding the exact scale of energy poverty in the region remains elusive. Assessing the ‘unmet’ electricity demand A recent study by Garg, et al.

Summary: South Africa’s energy crisis has deepened but could still get worse. Delayed reforms and persistent allegations of corruption obscure a clear pathway forward. Relevance: Technically insolvent state-owned power company Eskom now implements rolling blackouts (known as ‘load-shedding’) on a daily basis, at a huge cost to the South African economy and society. The Eskom crisis has implications for the entire southern African region.

The positive relationship between energy and economic growth is clear: income and energy consumption are tightly correlated on every continent and across every time period for which data exists.

Large-scale clean energy projects are capital intensive, which makes them difficult to finance when project risk – real or perceived – is high.

Rose Mutiso joins the show to discuss the connection between access to affordable electricity and poverty and details a path forward for energy-poor countries in Africa.