Provision of electricity to African households: The importance of democracy and institutional quality

By H. Ahlborg, Frida Boräng, Sverker C. Jagers, Patrik Söderholm. 2015

169 citations recorded by the source corpus.

How can differences in per capita household electricity consumption across African countries be understood? Based on theories that highlight the importance of democracy and institutional quality for provision of public goods, the aim of the paper is to analyse the degree to which the level of per capita household electricity consumption in African countries can be attributed to the countries’ democratic status and their institutional quality. We rely on regression analysis employing a pooled data set for 44 African countries over the time period 1996–2009. The analysis shows that democracy and institutional quality both have significant positive effects on per capita household consumption of electricity. Our results have implications for how energy sector reforms are promoted in developing countries. At a more general level they illustrate that institution-building policy efforts are relevant also in areas where contemporary debates have tended to primarily centre on economic development, financial prerequisites and ownership issues.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Pollution

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3cf72faad35ebafcebf06ac1817e200bb7b4637c

How researchers see this paper

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In Economics and Econometrics

1. Dumisani Chirambo
2. Matthew J. Burke
3. J. Stephens

In Pollution

1. J. Stephens
2. Matthew J. Burke
3. C. Njiru
4. Dumisani Chirambo
5. S. Letema

Citations in the corpus

• Energy Poverty and Its Implication on Standard of Living in Kirinyaga, Kenya (2018, background): “About 83% of households in sub-Saharan Africa rely on traditional fuels while 74% lack electricity [9, 10] and despite the fact that energy resources are more than sufficient to meet domestic needs, they remain underexploited and access to modern services is limited [11, 12].”
• Towards the achievement of SDG 7 in sub-Saharan Africa: Creating synergies between Power Africa, Sustainable Energy for All and climate finance in-order to achieve universal energy access before 2030 (2018, background): “Whilst this might seem as encouraging news, caution has to be taken as in the case of Africa – a region characterised by poor institutional quality [70,71]– there is a likelihood, or threat that increasing energy access financial flows to Africa can potentially generate negative outcomes since aid (”
• Political power and renewable energy futures: A critical review (2017, background): “For purposes here, democracy is understood as not simply present or absent, but rather as existing on a continuum of more or less democratic forms [32,73,74], a view that allows for a sophisticated set of standards for critically examining democratic systems rather than relying on any specific neces”