By Fasilat Oluwuyi, Energy Access Reporter
While Asians leaped ahead and Latin Americans crawled, SubSaharan Africans barely moved…
425 Million people in the world gained access to electricity in the 11 years between 2010 and 2021.
It is good news; that the human population without access to power dropped from 1.1Billion in to 675Million, in roughly a decade.
The not-so -good news is that Africans are largely excluded from this gain and the so-called recent progress is not on track to reach universal access by 2030.
The 2023 edition of Energy Progress Report declares that globally, access to electricity grew by an annual average of 0.7 percentage points between 2010 and 2021, rising from 84% of the world’s population to 91%. The pace of annual growth slowed during 2019–21 to 0.6 percentage points.
The trend differs across regions. Fifty-one countries in the developing world have achieved universal access in those 11 years, 17 of them in Latin America and the Caribbean. Another 95 countries, concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa, were still short of the target in 2021, despite progress in about one-quarter of them—including half of the 20 countries with the largest access deficits (defined as the population lacking access to electricity).
In Sub-Saharan Africa, the number of people without access was roughly the same in 2021 as in 2010. Most of the decline in the unserved population came in Asia. The number of people without access plummeted in Central and Southern Asia, falling from 414Million in 2010 to 24Million in 2021, with much of the improvement occurring in Bangladesh, India, and other populous countries.
The number without access to electricity in Eastern and South-eastern Asia declined from 90Million to 35Million during the same period. In Northern Africa and Western Asia, the unserved population decreased less markedly—falling from 37Million in 2010 to 30Million in 2021.
The Energy Progress Report is a product of close collaboration among the five Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 7 custodian agencies; International Energy Agency (IEA); International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA); United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD); World Bank and World Health Organization (WHO).
To bridge the electricity gap, especially for people living in poor and remote regions, the annual rate of growth in access must be 1 percentage point per year from 2021 onward—almost twice the current pace. If no additional efforts and measures are put in place, some 660Million people, mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa, would still be unserved in 2030.
In 2021, the 20 countries with the largest access deficits accounted for 75% of the world’s people lacking electricity access. The countries with the largest numbers without access were Nigeria (86Million), the Democratic Republic of Congo (76Million), and Ethiopia (55Million). In 2021, these top three countries are the same as in the previous edition of this report. India and South Sudan dropped out of the top 20, and Zambia and Mali joined it. Increases in electrification did not keep up with population growth in the Democratic Republic of Congo between 2019 and 2021. As a result, the access deficit there increased by about 2Million people. In contrast, the number of people without access in Nigeria and Ethiopia decreased by 2Million each year between 2019 and 2021, although those countries are still in the top three in terms of unserved population.
Policies for energy access should demonstrate political commitment and maximize the socioeconomic benefits of access, keeping the most vulnerable populations at the forefront of efforts to close the access gap.
Access to electricity is expected to improve through 2030, after the difficult economic conditions created by the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine have stabilized. However, variations across countries will persist, and many countries will not reach universal access by 2030 unless much more is done, the report argues. “Even then, progress may be limited for countries with weak energy access–related institutions and policies. The outlook is better for countries with strong institutional and policy support for access, most of which have already made historic progress in bringing the benefits of electricity to their population. According to IEA’s Net Zero by 2050 Scenario, annual investment of $30Nillion will be required to achieve universal access to electricity by 2030”, the Energy Report explains.
