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# Introduction

Sub‐Saharan Africa (Africa hereafter) lags behind all other regions of the world in household access<sup>2</sup> to electricity, per capita power consumption, and installed generation capacity. Africa accounted for 13 out of the top 20 countries in the world with the largest numbers of people without access to electricity identified in the Global Tracking Framework report published in 2015 (World Bank and IEA 2015). The report found that the percentage of people living in households with access to electricity in 2012 was about 35 percent. However, disparity between urban and rural areas was stark—69 percent of urban residents but only 15 percent of rural residents were estimated to have had access to electricity. The region with the second lowest access rate, South Asia, had more than double the percentage of people living with electricity (79 percent), and nearly five times the percentage share of rural residents with electricity (70 percent).

The global initiative, _Sustainable Energy for All_ , brings diverse partners together to work toward universal access to electricity by 2030. Africa is likely to be the last region of the world to reach this target. Years of underspending, serious shortcomings in operational efficiency, underpricing, high costs of small‐scale operation, over‐reliance on expensive oil‐based power generation, and the inability of many customers to pay for electricity services have contributed to much lower generation capacity per capita than in other regions. Existing customers face frequent power outages, and new connections in some countries have barely kept with population growth.

Benefits of electrifying households are many. Electric lighting is safer, more convenient, and far more efficient than kerosene lamps. Electricity enables households to use electronic forms of communication, and refrigeration makes food safer as well as reduces the frequency of grocery shopping and cooking. Studies analyzing data from household surveys have found positive effects of electrification on income (Kumar and Rauniyar 2011; Khandker et al. 2012; Khandker, Barnes, and Samead 2013; Van de Walle et al. 2013), employment (Dinkelman 2011; Khandker et al. 2012; Grogan and Sadanad 2013; Van de Walle et al. 2013), and education (Kumar and Rauniyar 2011; Khandker et al. 2012; Khandker, Barnes, and Samead 2013; Van de Walle et al. 2013).

In order to understand better why so many households in Africa do not have access to electricity despite its many benefits, some have studied possible constraints facing households. Komives et al. (2005) analyzed electricity access by quintile and by poverty status. The study covered about 40 countries, and predictably found that access was much lower for poor households. However, only three countries in Africa were included in the study, and most other countries had much higher rates of access. The study assessed the effectiveness of subsidies embedded within the tariff structure and the potential improvements that could be made by redesign of the tariff structure.

Komives et al. broke down access into two factors in assessing whether subsidies could benefit low‐income households: the “community access rate” and the “connection rate” for those living in communities with 2 In international initiatives to achieve universal access, access has come to mean having electricity at home, and this paper uses the word in that sense. However, some literature has defined access to mean availability of electricity in the community and uses the term “coverage” to mean having electricity at home. The difference between percent coverage and percent access is the percentage of people or households who live in communities with electricity but have chosen not to have it at home (for example, have chosen not to connect to the grid), most usually for financial reasons. To the extent that anyone can have a generator at home, private generators are excluded from access in the latter sense.