Access to (Green) Energy in Rural Africa: Evaluation report

Abstract

Living without access to modern energy - in this evaluation, people from rural areas of Benin, Senegal and Uganda give striking accounts of what this means for their everyday lives: people cook over an open fire in dark houses or gardens; the smoke from the fireplaces represents a health hazard; children do their homework in the dim light of candles or paraffin lamps; a lot of time is spent searching for firewood; neither private households nor shops tend to have refrigerators to protect perishable food; water has to be carried out to the fields for irrigation - mostly by women and girls. 600 million or 43 percent of all Africans still have to manage without electricity in their households (IEA, 2022). Most of these people without access to modern energy live in sub Saharan Africa. Even where the households are connected to the electricity grid, energy access is often unreliable and many people can barely afford the connection fees. This represents a major barrier to development and severely restricts the production potential and expansion of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) in rural areas; it also inhibits business start-ups. The population's education and health also suffer from the lack of basic energy access. Schools can rarely offer evening classes. In 2023, only half of the hospitals and health centres in sub-Saharan Africa had reliable access to electricity (WHO, 2023), making it impossible to use important medical equipment adequately or store medicines safely. In maternity wards, midwives often have to work by the light of mobile phones or torches.