SIERRA LEONE‘S INFRASTRUCTURE: A CONTINENTAL PERSPECTIVE Another problem is that electricity access rates are extremely low. Sierra Leone has one of the lowest levels of power access in Africa (table 3). Varying estimates suggest that only between 1 and 5 percent of the population has access to power in Sierra Leone (World Bank 2010 and EIU 2009). With the exception of Freetown and the townships of Bo and Kenema, where access to power is also very low relative to other countries, people of Sierra Leone are not connected to the electricity grid. Most of the population relies on paraffin and biomass for access to energy (EIU 2009).

**Table 3. Benchmarking Sierra Leone’s power infrastructure**

||Unit|Sierra Leone|Low-income<br>fragile<br>countries|Low-incom<br>non-fragile<br>countries|e,<br> <br> <br>Middle-income<br>countries|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|Access (national)|% of population|5|15|33|50|
|Access (urban)|% of population|35|57.6|86|101|
|Access (rural)|% of population|3.5|3.9|4|32|
|Installed generation capacity|MW per million people|13|46|20|799|
|Electricity consumption|KWH/capita|14|165|107|4,479|
|Power outages|Days/year|46|11.1|10|6|
|Value lost due to outages|% sales|6.6|5.4|6.5|1.6|
|Collection rate|% of billing|89|34|92|91|
|Cost recovery ratio|%|100|100|89|85|
|Revenue per unit|US cents per KWh|18|3|14|13|
|System losses|% generation|42|40|24|20|
|Total hidden costs|% revenue|451|443|69|0|
|Effective power tariff||Sierra Leone|Countri<br>predomina<br>gener|es with<br>ntly hydro<br>ation|Other developing<br>regions|
|Residential at 100 kWh|US$ cents|0.31–0.43|10.27|||
|Commercial at 900 KWh|US$ cents||11.73||5.0 – 10.0|
|Industrial at 50,000 kWh|US$ cents|0.30|11.39|||

_Source_ : Fragile and non-fragile countries’ figures are as of 2005 and are calculated using the power AICD database, downloadable from http://www.infrastructureafrica.org/aicd/tools/data, which contains household data. For Sierra Leone, national-access data was taken from EIU 2009 and is for 2009. urban-and-rural-access data was taken from Tallapragada and Shkaratan and others (2009) and is for 2003; electricity consumption was taken from the CIA World Fact Book and is for 2007; power-outage data was taken from Rosnes and Vennemo and is for 2005; value-lost-due-to-outages data was taken from Enterprise Surveys 2009; collection-rate data was taken from World Bank 2007 and is for 2007; system-losses data is for 2009 and was taken from World Bank 2010; industrial-tariff data is for 2006 and was based on World Bank 2006; residential-tariff data is based on 2011 estimates provided by World Bank staff.

Power outages are a huge problem in Sierra Leone. The country records 46 days of power outages per year, more than four times the level observed in other low-income and fragile states in Africa. Erratic power supply in Sierra Leone has repercussions throughout the economy. Due to frequent power outages, firms lost as much as 7 percent of their sales in 2009, which is greater than in other fragile African states (table 3). Mining companies in the Mano River region reported that power was a serious constraint to their productivity and that they relied on their own generators (World Bank 2010b). Simulations suggest that inadequate power generation corroded as much as 0.10 percent of per capita growth in Sierra Leone over the past decade.

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