A policy design guide for practitioners

Since the turn of the millennium, countries around the world have made great strides to expand access to electricity to their populations, increasing overall electricity access from 73% to 90% of the global population in just 20 years. In Sub-Saharan Africa, where the vast majority of people still without access to electricity live, the expansion of access outpaced population growth for the first time in 2015, and the total number of people lacking access to electricity has shrunk every year since.

Traditionally, governments have sought to provide energy access through expansion of the central electricity grid. However, grid expansion is a slow process, and tends to be financially and technically infeasible in sparsely populated rural areas. Transmission and distribution infrastructure also require constant maintenance, in the absence of which the grid can become unreliable. Thankfully, off-grid renewable energy technology provides an affordable, quick to deploy, reliable and climate-friendly alternative to grid expansion. Worldwide, 420 million people already use off-grid solar technology (primarily solar home systems and mini-grids) for electricity access. To achieve universal energy access by 2030 (Sustainable Development Goal 7), these solutions will need to be deployed at even greater scale, especially in rural areas.

Rural electrification through off-grid solutions requires a very different approach by governments compared to grid expansion. Governments have traditionally not directly involved themselves in deploying off-grid energy solutions, which remains the remit of the private sector companies. However, to accelerate their growth and help them reach more people, governments can and should work with these companies to develop and implement rural electrification strategies. Off-grid renewable energy companies are still viewed as risky investments and therefore tend to have difficulty attracting financing, but sound government-led electrification plans can help put investors’ minds at ease and offer the structure necessary to build vibrant markets and allow companies to build partnerships, secure long-term commitments and investments, and roll out energy solutions at scale.

This guide presents a number of strategies and approaches that provide a starting point for the development of a rural electrification strategy.