Significant digits
The world without power is down to one region
Since 2000 the number of people living without electricity has halved, to about 680 million — and nearly nine in ten of them now live in sub-Saharan Africa.
By SPHRE Data Desk ·
In 2000, 78 percent of the world's people had electricity and 1.34 billion did not. By 2023 access had reached 91.6 percent and the unelectrified were down to about 680 million — the population of the dark halved in a generation. Most of that halving happened in Asia, and it happened almost completely: India went from 60 percent access in 2000 to 99.5 in 2023, Bangladesh from 32 to 99.5. The world's largest poor countries simply finished the job.
Sub-Saharan Africa is climbing the same hill, later and against a steeper slope. Access rose from 25.7 percent in 2000 — one person in four — to 53.3 percent in 2023, crossing the halfway line in 2021. Some of the national climbs inside that average are among the fastest anywhere in the record: Kenya went from 15 percent of its people with power in 2000 to 76 percent in 2023, Rwanda from 6 to 64, Ghana from 44 to 90.
Data: Access to electricity
Share of the population with electricity: Asia's giants finish the climb, Kenya sprints, Nigeria grinds, DR Congo has barely begun.
Then comes the honest denominator. Sub-Saharan Africa's population grew from 681 million in 2000 to 1.26 billion in 2023, and the grid has been racing it. Run the multiplication and the region had about 506 million people without electricity in 2000, roughly 620 million at the 2015 peak, and 588 million in 2023 — after a generation of genuinely fast electrification, more people live without power there than did at the start. Meanwhile everyone else finished: the region held 38 percent of the world's unelectrified people in 2000, and holds 87 percent today.
Sub-Saharan Africa is winning the percentage and still losing the headcount.
What remains is concentrated and hard. Nigeria, at 61 percent access, holds about 88 million people without electricity — the largest unlit population on Earth. DR Congo, at 22 percent, holds another 82 million. The continent famously got online by phone, skipping the copper the rich world spent a century laying — but there is no leapfrogging a light bulb. The last 588 million need the pole, the cable and the grid, or the one technology that finally makes the wire optional: the solar panel.
Data: Access to electricity for KE
Data: Access to electricity
What to know
- Access to electricity reached 91.6 percent of humanity in 2023, up from 78 percent in 2000; the number of people without power roughly halved, to about 680 million.
- Sub-Saharan Africa crossed 50 percent access in 2021 and reached 53.3 percent in 2023 — but population growth means the region still had 588 million people without power, more than in 2000.
- The unelectrified world has concentrated in one region: sub-Saharan Africa held 38 percent of the people without electricity in 2000 and 87 percent in 2023, with Nigeria (about 88 million) and DR Congo (about 82 million) the largest unlit populations.