37 33, 65, and 38 percent for urban, rural, and national to 17, 59, and 23 percent, respectively, once inclusion of electricity in rent is taken into account.

# Multiple Connections

Progressive tariffs to protect the poor would be effective only if each household is individually metered. Unfortunately, shared metering is all too common in Africa. Multiply connected households cannot take full advantage of lifeline rates, and end up paying higher effective unit prices charged to the bulk of the consumption (see Table 4 for more detail). Four surveys asked questions from which the prevalence of multiple connections can be estimated:

- In Côte d’Ivoire, the survey asked if the household had its own meter, or shared a meter with others, or had no meter.

- In Ethiopia, the survey asked if the household had its own meter or shared a meter.

- In Sierra Leone, the survey asked if the household shared an electricity bill with others.

- In Senegal, the survey asked the household to report the amount paid to the neighbor over the last 12 months if the household did not have a contract with the utility and was using its neighbor’s electricity.

The results show that multiple connections are widespread in the first three countries. The share of households connected to the grid that had their own meters in Côte d’Ivoire and Ethiopia or did not share a utility bill with others in Sierra Leone was less than half, 42 percent, 40 percent, and 44 percent, respectively. In Côte d’Ivoire, this percentage did not vary much by quintile, but in Sierra Leone the share increased from the bottom quintile (26 percent) to the top quintile (46 percent), signaling that shared metering was dominant among low‐income households. By contrast, in Ethiopia, the share fell markedly in the top quintile, meaning shared meters were, unexpectedly, most common among the top quintile. To the extent that progressive tariffs are intended to help the poor, shared meters among the richest 20 percent do not defeat the purpose of progressive tariff design.

Perhaps not surprisingly, in Senegal—which does not charge the connection fee if a household is within 40 meters of the nearest power line—a much lower percentage reported not having a contract with the utility and paying their neighbors instead. The actual percentage of households with shared meters depends on the assumption about how many households are connected to a single meter on average, with the highest percentage of shared meters corresponding to only two households per meter. If only two households are assumed to be connected to the same meter on average, then 84 percent of households would have had their own meters. This percentage was lowest in the bottom quintile, 53 percent, and highest in the top two quintiles, 90–91 percent. If three households are connected to a meter on average, the percentage increases to 88 percent of all households having their own individual meters.

If there is only one distribution company and the number of residential consumers is separately reported by that company, comparison of the number of households connected to the grid found in the survey and the number of residential customers reported by the utility gives another indication of the prevalence of multiple connections. Such comparison is possible only in Malawi, where the utility data are available for the survey year. If every shared meter is assumed to be connected to two households, the percentage of grid‐connected households with their own unshared meters is 57 percent. If more than two households are connected, this percentage increases, for example to 68 percent if three households on average are connected to a single shared meter.