The Top 10 African Countries with the Worst Electricity Situation

Business Insider Africa presents 10 African countries with the worst electricity access.
This list is courtesy of Tracking SDG7: The Energy Progress Report, a global dashboard dedicated to registering progress on energy access.
electricity access simply entails the percentage of people, within a given location or country, who have stable access to electricity.

Recently, we published a report detailing countries with the best electricity access in Africa. It gained quite a lot of traction, with more than 150, 000 reads in its first week of publication alone. This traction wasn’t so surprising. After all, it’s a known fact that electricity is a major pain-point for most Africans. Therefore, any discussion about the subject will surely captivate their interest.

Based on the wide traction received by the previous article, we figured it’s be nice to publish a follow-up; basically focusing on African countries that have the worst electricity access.

Before we unveil the list, it’s important to note a few things. First, the African continent currently has the worst electricity access in the world. And the continent’s electricity challenge is mainly due to decades-long failure by African leaders to adequately invest in their respective countries’ electricity sectors so as to build much needed capacity.

In order to considerably improve on Africa’s electricity access access problem, about $350 billion needs to be invested between now and 2030, according to a recent report by Wood Mackenzie Ltd. The amount would specifically be invested towards improving capacity for electricity generation and distribution.

In the meantime, below are 10 African countries with the worst electricity access in Africa. The list is courtesy of Tracking SDG7: The Energy Progress Report, a global dashboard dedicated to registering progress on energy access across Africa. The dashboard is a collaborative initiative of the International Energy Agency (IEA), the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD), the World Bank and other partners.

South Sudan: Has 7% electricity access.
Chad: Has 11% electricity access.
Central African Republic: Has 15% electricity access.
Malawi: Has 15% electricity access.
Democratic Republic of Congo: Has 19% electricity access.
Niger: Has 19% electricity access.
Burkina Faso: Has 19% electricity access.
Sierra-Leone: Has 26% electricity access.
Liberia: Has 28% electricity access.
Mozambique: Has 31% electricity access.