4 electricity. Together these factors defined the “access” rate.<sup>3</sup> For example, 88 percent of all households in Cabo Verde lived in communities that had connection to the grid, while 63 percent of these households were actually connected, leading to an overall access rate of 55 percent. The difference between community access and household access was much greater for poor households—72 percent of the poor had community access in Cabo Verde, but only 34 percent was actually connected, giving an access rate of 25 percent. The situations in São Tomé and Príncipe and Rwanda were similar—community access was only slightly lower for the poor, but household connection of those with community access was much lower. The distinction between “community access” and “household access” was shown to be important in the study by Van de Walle et al. (2013). This showed that non‐connected households, when their neighbors were connected, may have also received benefits from the electrification. This conclusion suggested that the overall benefits from providing access could be greater than those accruing just to the households connected.

Briceño‐Garmendia and Shkaratan (2011) analyzed spending on electricity by quintile in Africa. They found that the share of total household expenditure allocated to electricity was below 3 percent in most countries, and that the share was relatively stable across expenditure quintiles. The authors used this information to check whether households could afford to pay the full economic cost of consumption at the subsistence level. Affordability was defined as spending being in the range of 3–5 percent of total household expenditure, while consumption at the subsistence level was defined as 50 kilowatt‐hours (kWh) per month. The study found that on existing tariffs consumption at the subsistence level is affordable for the large majority of those already connected. However, for those not already connected consumption at the subsistence level would be affordable at existing tariffs for only one‐quarter of such households. Were tariffs to be raised to cost recovery levels, far fewer of the unconnected would be able to afford to purchase even consumption at the subsistence level. An even larger barrier to access is the existence of a connection charge. Golumbeanu and Barnes (2013) described the way in which connection charges can be so large that they are unaffordable for many low‐income households. Evidence from a number of countries indicated that countries with higher connection charges, controlling for the level of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, tended to have lower access.

Surveys of household access to electricity and its use have highlighted the issue that some households pay nothing or only part of the appropriate charge for the use of electricity. Smith (2004) pointed out that electricity theft could be in the form of fraud (meter tampering), stealing (illegal connections), billing irregularities, and unpaid bills. Calculations based on data from 102 countries showed that average transmission and distribution losses, which include losses from theft, had increased between 1980 and 2000 for all regions except Western Europe and North America. Antmann (2009) provided an analysis of methods of reducing technical and non‐technical losses in the power sector drawn from experience in several countries. The use of pre‐payment meters has been identified as one way of dealing with delinquent bill payment by households. Tewari and Shah (2003) describe the South African experience, starting in 1989, of the introduction of pre‐paid meters and their benefits, costs, and problems. A study by Jack and Smith (2015) of purchasing patterns of electricity in South Africa through pre‐payment meters found that the bottom‐ quintile households tended to buy electricity three times as often but in amounts that are only one‐fifth of those households in the top quintile. The pattern of small frequent transactions is consistent with the existence of liquidity constraints and difficulties in smoothing income, suggesting that the pay‐as‐you‐go approach of pre‐paid meters is preferable for low‐income households to a monthly billing cycle. In Uganda

> 3 Komives et al. used the term “access” to denote the fact that households in the neighborhood had an electricity connection and “connection” to indicate that the household was itself connected to the grid. Angel‐Urdinola and Wodon (2007) called the former “community access” and the latter “users”.