...and the World Bank Group has a responsibility to meet it head-on.

Access to electricity is transformative in improving education, healthcare, water supply, essential communications, and opportunities for income generation.  But about 1.1 billion people around the world, mostly poor, have no access to electricity. Of these, 591 million are in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). At current rates of population growth and electrification, this number will increase to 935 million by the year 2030. Suffice it to say, in the absence of a quantum leap in access, another generation in the region will be denied the benefits of electricity access.  

Meanwhile, South Asia and East Asia (with 378 and 99 million without access respectively) are broadly on track to narrow the access gap by 2030.

And, of those around the world who do have access to electricity, another 1 billion contend with chronic shortages and outages, undermining productivity and overall economic growth.

The #SE4All Challenge

Recognizing these issues, the World Bank Group (WBG) and the United Nations committed to the Sustainable Energy for All (SE4All) initiative for achieving universal access to electricity by 2030.  This initiative complements the WBG's goals of increasing shared prosperity and ending extreme poverty by 2030.

The SE4All challenge is most firmly centered in SSA: 40 of the 51 "low-access" (less that 50 percent population connected) countries in the world are in SSA. Of those, 22 countries have less than 25 percent access, and seven countries have access below 10 percent.

The SE4All goal for all low-access countries requires a quantum leap from the present pace of 1.6 million connections per year to 14.6 million per year until 2030. The corresponding annual investment required, including generation needs, is $37 billion.   By comparison, these countries receive an average $3.6 billion per year investment in electricity from public and private sources, including $1.5 billion per year from the WBG.

In our recent evaluation World Bank Support to Electricity Access, 2000-2014 we examined the World Bank Group's performance and preparedness to put its country clients on track to achieve universal access to electricity.

The World Bank Group provided $63.5 billion to the electricity sector during FY00-14, about 9 percent of all World Bank Group commitments.  IEG finds that the associated development outcomes were favorable overall.  But low access countries, particularly in SSA, were not particularly well served:

• Low-access countries received only 22 percent of World Bank, and 6 percent of IFC lending for the sector;

• Among 51 low access countries, the World Bank approved zero projects in 14 countries, only one project in each of 10 countries, and two projects each in 7 countries. IFC and MIGA had no activities in 29 and 43 countries respectively. 

• We found the median duration of a World Bank electricity sector investment project to be 9 years.  At this rate, most low-access countries are likely to benefit from just two World Bank projects in the next 15 years.

The Shining Lights

But there is also good news.  IEG's evaluation highlights several good practice national access scale-up experiences worldwide, some with significant WBG  involvement - Vietnam, Lao PDR, Indonesia; and Bangladesh and Mongolia (off-grid solar home systems)- and more recently in Rwanda and Kenya.  These experiences highlight common underlying principles adapted to each country context: adhering to a nationwide least-cost national access rollout plan using coordinated grid and off-grid means; maintaining the financial sustainability of sector institutions, to ensure investment financing on a sustained basis; targeting the poor to ensure affordability; and not the least, a unifying government vision and committed leadership that stays the course over the duration of the implementation program.

Showing the Way Forward

The SE4All challenge requires the WBG to reposition itself as a global solutions provider in the sector, going well beyond the confines of its own direct support for access.  IEG's evaluation highlights the urgency for the World Bank Group's energy practice to adopt a new and transformative strategy to help country clients orchestrate national, sustained, sector-level engagement for universal access.  We recommend that the World Bank Group should: 

• Engage decisively and focus intensively on countries with low electricity access (most of which are in SSA)

• Move from a predominantly project-by-project approach - which lacks the requisite scale and speed - to a far greater use of a sector-wide organizing framework and process for implementing rapid access scale-up.  The scope and timing of this transition should be led and coordinated by relevant governments, taking into account sector context and readiness in each instance;

• Design an investment financing platform led by government to crowd-in necessary financial resources from both public and private sources, well beyond the limitations of the World Bank Group's own conventional project and transaction modes of operation. 

Achieving universal access to electricity by 2030 presents a formidable challenge, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa.  But it is a challenge that the WBG can innovatively work to overcome along with country clients and partners, employing strategies informed by experience and evidence.  

Read the Report: World Bank Support to Electricity Access, 2000-2014