A majority of sub-Saharan Africa’s population is not connected to electricity and piped water networks, and even in urban areas coverage is low. Lack of network coverage may be due to demand or supply-side factors. Some households may live in areas where access to piped water and electricity...

Water and sanitation utilities in Africa operate in a high-cost environment. They also have a mandate to at least partially recover their costs of operations and maintenance (O&M). As a result, water tariffs are higher than in other regions of the world. The increasing block tariff (IBT) is the...

Water and sanitation utilities in Africa operate in a high-cost environment. They also have a mandate to at least partially recover their costs of operations and maintenance (O&M). As a result, water tariffs are higher than in other regions of the world. The increasing block tariff (IBT) is the...

Household surveys have long been used to estimate poverty and inequality trends, as well as trends in education and health indicators, but they have not been used to the same extent to assess trends in the access to or coverage of modern infrastructure services. In this paper, we use Demographic...

A majority of sub-Saharan Africa s population is not connected to electricity and piped water networks, and even in urban areas coverage is low. Lack of network coverage may be due to demand or supply-side factors. Some households may live in areas where access to piped water and electricity is...

A recent study for sub-Saharan Africa by Banerjee et al. (2007) uses Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) from 22 countries that have conducted at least two such surveys between 1990 and 2005 in order to collect comparable information across countries on access to modern and alternative...

Africa lags well behind other developing regions in infrastructure access. The limited gains of the 1990s have not increased much in the 2000s. There is clear evidence that many countries are failing to expand services fast enough to keep ahead of rapid demographic growth and even faster...

This short dissemination note provides a synthesis of key results from a recent study on access to infrastructure services in Africa. Using Demographic and Health Surveys from 22 countries that have conducted at least two such surveys between 1990 and 2005, we provide comparable estimates over...