6 is not complete. Households that had spent more than 30 percent of their total expenditures on electricity are considered outliners and dropped.

All questionnaires except the one in South Africa asked for the primary sources of energy for lighting and cooking; the South African survey asked if the household was connected to the grid, and the response to that question substitutes the question about the primary energy source for lighting in the rest of this paper.

Some surveys listed off‐grid electricity separately (typically solar and backup generators), while some had only one category called electricity. “Solar energy”—the term used in Botswana, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Senegal, Swaziland, and Uganda—could mean solar home systems only or could include solar lanterns. This lack of distinction is unfortunate because solar lamps would not fall under the category of electricity access, whereas solar home systems would. Mali, Mozambique, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, and Zambia asked specifically about solar panels. Seventeen surveys asked specifically about grid electricity, of which sixteen asked if the household was connected to the grid, and Togo asked about paying electricity bills over the previous two months (thereby excluding those connected to the grid but had not made payments during the recall period); several asked respondents if they had their own meters or were sharing meters with others.

Spending on electricity in this paper excludes expenditures on items not considered as part of access to electricity: batteries, candles, kerosene, and liquefied petroleum gas. While fuels for generators would be part of spending on electricity, only Rwanda and Zambia enabled isolation of spending on fuel for generators; all other countries bundled spending on gasoline and diesel for vehicles or lawn mowers with spending on either fuel for generators. For consistency across countries, spending on diesel used in generators in these countries was excluded from expenditure on electricity.

The surveys did not enable systematic analysis of access at different levels according to the recently formulated multi‐tier access framework for the Sustainable Energy for All initiative. The framework defines energy access as the ability to obtain energy that is adequate, available when needed, reliable, affordable, legal, convenient, healthy, and safe for all required energy applications (World Bank 2015). For household connection to electricity, there are five tiers in the framework, with grid electricity corresponding to tiers 3–5 depending on appliances being used and kWh consumed per year and per day. Information on appliance use was not available in any survey, and plausible data on kWh consumed were available in only two to three surveys. In the face of these data limitations, this paper instead examined access at five different levels:

1. People living in households that reported connection to the grid

2. Adding to 1 people living in households that reported using electricity—excluding generators and solar energy if they are separately counted—as the primary source of energy for lighting, cooking, or both 3. Adding to 2 people living in households that reported using generators or diesel as the primary source of energy for lighting, cooking, or both, or reported owning generators 4. Adding to 3 people living households that reported using solar panels as the primary source of energy for lighting, cooking, or both, or reported owning solar panels; or solar energy in the place of solar panels if only information on solar energy was available 5. Adding to 4 people who reported non‐zero expenditures on electricity.

Definition 2 is the same as definitions 3 and 4 in Malawi and São Tomé and Príncipe where the survey did not specifically asked about use of generators and solar panels or solar energy. Access to solar panels is preferred