Nigeria Electricity Access Program
Despite abundant domestic energy resources, only around 20 percent of Nigerians have grid electricity, millions rely on electricity from generators, and about 80 million people lack electricity access altogether. In recent years, the country has embarked on an ambitious effort to reform the electricity sector. With funding from the World Bank, utilities seek planning assistance for both rapid expansion of grid networks as well as approaches to increase off-grid access. As a result, SEL began working closely with the domestic utility—KEDCO, which serves Kano, Jigawa, and Katsina states—to create geo-spatially referenced maps of existing electricity infrastructure and subsequently plan for greater access. The work with KEDCO is intended as a pilot, to investigate local datasets and best practices for SEL’s data-driven approach to be expanded to national scale.