Electricity access continues to improve in 2024 - after first global setback in decades

The IEA’s latest data show the number of people without access to electricity declined by more than 10 million from over 760 million in 2022 to below 750 million in 2023. This follows a period of stagnation and setbacks in extending electricity access, where population growth exceeded new connections in many countries. The IEA was the first to report that the number of people globally without access to electricity increased for the first time in decades in 2022 using data from new grid and off-grid connections—a finding that was confirmed earlier this year by household surveys. Data for the first months of 2024 suggest that improvements are set to continue this year, as the number of people without access to electricity is expected to decline by a similar amount as in 2023. 

Global improvements remain well below pre-2020 levels. Between 2015 and 2019, the population without access decreased each year by 80 million on average. This slowdown is largely due to countries such as India and Indonesia having achieved universal access in the same period. Still, in around 80% of the countries without universal access today it is still slower than in the late 2010s. Current improvement rates are far below what is necessary to reach the SDG7.1 target of universal electricity access by 2030, which requires the population without access to decrease on average ten times faster than today.

Countries in developing Asia have made significant strides in expanding electricity access, with more than half a billion people gaining access in the past decade. India and Indonesia both reached universal access between 2021 and 2022, and Bangladesh hit the milestone in 2023. More than 70% of countries in the region have achieved access rates above 90%. As these countries approach universal access, progress has slowed as efforts to connect the last mile populations have proven more challenging. As of 2023, some 107 million people still lack access to electricity in the region, mostly in Pakistan, Myanmar, and Dem. People’s Rep. of Korea.

Similarly, in Latin America, where most countries excluding Haiti have already achieved high levels of electrification, reaching the most remote and indigenous populations is proving more challenging than expected, but progress resumed again in 2023 after stagnating since the pandemic.

The most severe gap persists in sub-Saharan Africa, where 80% of the global population without electricity access live. After three years of backsliding, progress resumed in 2023, driven by an acceleration in grid connections, continued growth in solar-home systems deployment, and, to a lesser extent, new mini grids development. In 2023, 600 million sub-Saharan Africans1 still lacked access to electricity, a number higher than in 2019. Even with continued progress in 2024 as suggested by preliminary reporting, the number of people without access to electricity in the region will still be slightly higher than in 2019 by the end of this year.

The number of new annual electricity connections in sub-Saharan Africa reached more than 6.5 million in 2023, an increase of 60% since the 2021 dip and just shy of the around 7 million connected in 2019. Countries with a strong history of expanding electricity access are contributing the most to the recovery, with significant single-year improvements in grid connections driving the rebound in countries like Ghana, Nigeria, and Uganda. The number of new grid connections in these three countries has more than doubled since the 2020–2022 dip, reaching or even surpassing pre-crisis levels. Most countries, however, are still lagging below their historical progress levels. In 2023, more than 40% of the population in sub-Saharan Africa was connected to the main grid. Grids and mini-grids provided access to more than 4 million additional households in 2023.

The market for mini-grids has been growing in recent years as more countries institute regulatory frameworks to facilitate the financing and implementation of these projects. Around 27 million people were connected to a mini-grid in sub-Saharan Africa in 2021. Countries such as Nigeria and Uganda have seen an acceleration in the number of mini-grid licenses that have been permitted and registered, and in the number of customers connected to mini-grids. Based on planned projects and permits in the region we estimate this trend to continue to accelerate and that by the end of 2023 around 40 million people, or 3% of the population, had access through a mini-grid in sub-Saharan Africa.

A surge in Solar Home Systems (SHS)2 is also playing a key role in electricity access, reaching more than one third of the region’s total new connections in 2023 while being almost negligible just a decade ago. Despite a challenging macroeconomic context, according to GOGLA, sales of SHS in sub-Saharan Africa increased 3% in 2023, after a remarkable 54% increase in 2022. While there was a slight decrease in sales in more established markets in eastern Africa, these were outweighed by continued growth in west African markets, driven by Nigeria, and record sales in southern Africa.

According to IEA estimates, in 2023 around 43 million people or 4% of the population in sub-Saharan Africa have access through SHS, and an additional 30 million use SHS as a source of back-up electricity. The market for SHS as back-up has seen a large uptick recently in Nigeria, South Africa, and Angola, where power cuts and reliability issues have prompted many residents to rely on backup diesel and petrol generators or SHS to compensate for electricity shortfalls. While SHS sales continue to grow in Africa, elsewhere the market saw a decline in 2023. In developing Asia, sales of SHS continued to decrease in 2023 due to increased grid connectivity and the use of grid-connected solar systems.

Data from the first months of 2024 indicate that the rate of new household grid connections in sub-Saharan Africa is set to stay at the levels seen in 2023. At the same time, recent analysis suggests record mini-grids connections in 2024. Conversely, the recently released GOGLA data for the first half of 2024 suggest that this year both global and sub-Saharan Africa SHS sales might settle below the highs of 2023, but East Africa, the world's largest market, is turning back to growth.

Progress remains far behind the levels required in most countries to reach universal access by 2030, and without further action around 645 million people will still lack access globally by the end of the decade. New measures and innovations have recently improved the long-term outlook compared to previous years, with around one-third of the population without access living in a country that recently implemented a positive change in their electricity access paradigm. Still, challenges remain, including limited access to affordable commercial finance, difficulties in disbursing funds for “smaller” projects, growing debt burdens, and competing demands on overseas development assistance budgets. Renewed commitments to financing energy access would be crucial to ensure energy access efforts continue to progress, and should be considered within the broader context of efforts to mobilise more climate and concessional finance to developing countries.

This commentary is an annual release of the IEA’s latest country data on electricity access. It is accompanied by an update of the IEA’s SDG7 database and the launch of country profiles for the 10 African countries involved in the IEA’s Energy Sub-Saharan Africa Programme. This data is collected annually by the IEA from official national sources, utility data, and off-grid systems sales among other sources and is the result of concerted efforts to improve data collection in Africa through capacity-building activities.