Access to Electricity: Who Remains Without Power?

Reliable electricity access is important for improving quality of life. It contributes to increasing comfort, but also supports work productivity, connectivity, education, and the provision of health services. Lack of access to electricity severely limits opportunities to learn, work, and thrive.

Electricity enables students to study after dark, ensures medical supplies storage and provision, powers irrigation, enables modern industrial production, and creates jobs,[reference: job_creation] all essential drivers of economic and social development. Yet, 666 million people still live without electricity, and many more have limited or unreliable supply.

Access to electricity has increased almost continuously over the past two decades. But while many regions have achieved near-universal access, large gaps remain.

While progress has been remarkable, this indicator captures only the most basic level of electricity access. It measures the share of people whose primary source of lighting at home is electricity, whether from the grid, solar home systems, mini-grids, or other stand-alone renewable sources. [reference: sdg7_1_1] Having a connection, however, does not guarantee access to reliable, affordable, or sufficient electricity to power appliances and support productive uses.[footnote: To see the different levels of electricity access defined by the Multi-Tier Framework, please see World Bank. 2023. “Access to Universal and Sustainable Electricity: Meeting the Challenge.” In Atlas of Sustainable Development Goals 20203.] Still, reaching universal access at this basic level is a critical milestone. It is the first step toward ensuring that everyone can benefit from modern energy services.

But has this remarkable progress translated into a decline in the total number of people without electricity access?

Urban areas reached near‑universal electricity access long before rural ones. In 2000, 94 percent of urban residents had electricity, compared with just 66 percent of people in rural areas. By 2023, rural access had climbed to around 83 percent, significantly narrowing the gap.

In most regions, urban and rural access rates have gradually moved closer together. But Sub-Saharan Africa stands out as a persistent outlier. In 2023, only one-in-three rural residents in the region had access to electricity, compared with more than four-in-five people in urban areas.

The persistence of this gap in Sub‑Saharan Africa reflects the higher costs per connection and constraints in affordability in sparsely populated, low‑income rural areas. Homes are widely dispersed, driving up infrastructure costs, while lower electricity use in rural areas limits revenues for providers. Although the underlying economics represents a challenge to service extension into remote rural areas,[reference: wb_electrifying_africa] planning and regulatory shortcomings have also played a role in delaying rural electrification and the wider deployment of off‑grid options.[reference: wb_ssa_access]

Of the 30 countries with the largest populations that lack electricity, 24 are in Sub-Saharan Africa. Three —[emphasis: Nigeria], [emphasis: the Democratic Republic of Congo], and [emphasis: Ethiopia]— account for around one-third of the world’s population without electricity access.

While all three host large populations without electricity access, their national contexts differ considerably. The share of population without[emphasis: ]access ranges from around 40 percent in Nigeria and 45 percent in Ethiopia to 80 percent in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Their electrification trajectories also diverge. Between 2015 and 2023, progress in Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo lagged comparable countries, reflecting slow and uneven gains. Ethiopia, on the other hand, made substantial strides, expanding electricity access at nearly twice the pace of its peers (see this explainer for a detailed description of the methodology on progress used in the Atlas).

In all three countries, electricity access for rural residents lags urban residents. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, electricity access for rural populations remained extremely low, (around 1 percent) between 2015 and 2023. In Nigeria, the levels were not as low, but little has changed in both rural and urban areas. By contrast, Ethiopia made rapid progress in expanding electricity access in rural areas. From nearly no access, almost half the rural population has access to electricity today. In urban areas, access was already fairly high in 2000, and by 2023, it had reached near universal access. Although gaps remain, the country has notably reduced the urban-rural access gap.

Electricity access and the infrastructure that supports it vary widely between densely connected urban areas and more isolated rural regions. In cities, people are usually connected to a national electricity grid, while in remote rural areas, many households rely on small solar systems or have no connection. And when households have access to electricity, the quality of supply can vary widely: some have stable power all day, while others experience frequent blackouts, low voltage, or intermittent access.

Let’s examine electricity access at a more granular level, drawing on household surveys and geospatial data to better understand the dynamics of electricity access in Ethiopia and Nigeria, two countries with some of the largest populations without electricity.

Grid unreliability is a defining feature of electricity access in Nigeria, where blackouts are frequent and prolonged across much of the country.[reference: nigeria_survey] At national level, households report about seven outages per week, with a typical duration of 12 hours. To cope, many Nigerians alternate between grid power and generators. Petrol and diesel generators are ubiquitous in both urban and rural settings. Although they provide an essential backup, they are financially burdensome and a source of toxic emissions that harm both people and ecosystems.[reference: nigeria_blog]

Like in Nigeria, electricity access in Ethiopia is uneven, and urban centers, such as Addis Ababa and the regional capitals have the highest access level through grid connection. In urban centers, 92 percent of the population relied on grid lines as their primary electricity source in 2022.[reference: ethiopia_survey] But even here, access is not universal, as five percent of urban Ethiopians (1.7 million people) do not have access to electricity.

While access reliability may still be an issue in Ethiopia, the country has made significant improvements, with some regions experiencing a 50 percent decrease in power outages over 2019–22.[reference: ethiopia_survey]

Despite significant global progress in electricity access, major gaps remain. The vast majority of people without electricity are in Sub-Saharan Africa, where 581 million people lacked access in 2023. Even within the region, a small number of countries account for most of this deficit. Spatial inequalities also endure, with rural areas persistently lagging urban centers.

Resources and efforts must therefore be focused on reaching universal access in this region, where the nature of access gaps varies widely, reflecting differences in geography, infrastructure, utility performance, and regulatory environments. Closing the divide will require context-specific approaches that align local conditions with appropriate technical and financing solutions.

The World Bank is working with regional institutions and governments to help close these gaps. In 2024, the World Bank and African Development Bank launched Mission 300,[reference: mission300] a joint initiative to accelerate universal access in Sub-Saharan Africa by providing electricity to 300 million people by 2030, effectively halving the number of people currently without power. Mission 300 will expand grid connections where this is economically viable, strengthen utilities to improve service quality and financial sustainability, and scale decentralized renewables—such as mini-grids and solar home systems—to reach communities beyond the grid.