Electrification for “Under Grid” households in Rural Kenya

Kenneth Lee, Eric Brewer, Carson Christiano, Francis Meyo, Edward Miguel, Matthew Podolsky, Javier Rosa and Catherine Wolfram

Department of Economics, Working Paper Series from Department of Economics, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley

Abstract: In Sub-Saharan Africa, 600 million people live without electricity. Despite ambitions of governments and donors to invest in rural electrification, decisions about how to extend electricity access are being made in the absence of rigorous evidence. In this paper, we present high-resolution spatial data on electrification rates in rural Kenya in order to quantify and visualize energy poverty in a novel way. Using our dataset of 20,000 geo-tagged structures in Western Kenya, we provide descriptive evidence that electrification rates remain very low despite significant investments in nearby grid infrastructure. This pattern holds across time and for both poor and relatively well-off households and businesses. We argue that if governments wish to leverage existing infrastructure and economies of scale, subsidies and new approaches to financing connections are necessary.

Keywords: Development Studies; Human Society; Affordable and Clean Energy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-06-01
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/3n86c49k.pdf;origin=repeccitec (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Electrification for “Under Grid” households in Rural Kenya (2016)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cdl:econwp:qt3n86c49k

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Department of Economics, Working Paper Series from Department of Economics, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Lisa Schiff ().