In the long run,
the facts are on the side of the optimists.
To paraphrase Martin Luther King Jr., the arc of history bends toward progress. But progress doesn't just happen. People work hard to discover ways forward.
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Just since 2024, electrical service has reached the homes of 50 million more Africans across 40 countries.
Electricity is fundamental to every aspect of modern life from refrigerating food to reading after dark to running drip irrigation systems to connecting to the whole information age economy. Not to mention living in smoke-free houses. It’s the critical piece of infrastructure for building any kind of prosperity. The world’s rich countries built out their electrical grids into the countryside in the 1930s through the ‘50s. Some, like southern Italy, waited until the ‘60s. Middle income countries like Mexico, much of Latin America, and Southeast Asia did most of the electrification in the ‘60s through the ‘80s.
Today, nearly 9 out of 10 people without electricity live in Africa – nearly 600 million people. Most of them are rural, with the biggest concentrations in Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Ethiopia. A World Bank project, Mission 300, was launched in 2024 and aspires to wire up the homes of 300 million Africans by 2030. They are off to a strong start with their first 50 million.
Sources: Fix the News; Ecofin Agency; World Bank