Inclusive electrification in sub-saharan Africa: Cost–equality trade-offs

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 7 aims to ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all. Currently, there are 770 million people without access to electricity, with 75% residing in Sub-Saharan Africa. Decision-makers in countries with incomplete electrification systems face the challenge of increasing access rates while reducing system inequality. This paper proposes a framework that integrates data-driven analysis and optimization to identify structural trade-offs between cost and equality, departing from the traditional approach of cost-minimization planning. The study achieves this by incrementally increasing electricity access and solving a cost-minimizing model with and without equality (i.e., Gini) constraints, considering both on-grid and off-grid options in the electrification process. The equality (i.e., Gini) constraint aims to mitigate disparities in electrification rates across administrative units (e.g., regions and counties) within underdeveloped countries. Consequently, we compare minimum-cost and equality-enhancing electrification plans to reveal how incorporating spatial equality affects system-wide investment needs, under internally consistent assumptions. The value and context-specificity of the analysis are demonstrated in the Sub-Saharan African country cases of Benin, Ethiopia, Malawi, Mozambique, Niger and Zimbabwe.