More than 1.1 billion people in developing countries lack access to electricity. Based on the assumption that electricity is a prerequisite for economic development, the UN has proclaimed the goal of providing electricity to all by 2030. This will cost an estimated 640 billion USD. New empirical...

The note focuses on the external benefits of rural electrification (RE), i.e., improved access to communication, education, and economic opportunities, in addition to extended health services. It outlines key lessons to scaling up RE, namely macroeconomic stability, continued government...

In Sub-Saharan Africa, 600 million people live without electricity. Despite ambitions of governments and donors to invest in rural electrification, decisions about how to extend electricity access are being made in the absence of rigorous evidence. Using a novel dataset of 20,000 geo-tagged...

Universal access to modern energy services, in terms of access to electricity and to modern cooking facilities, has been recognized as a fundamental challenge for development. Despite strong praise for action and the deployment of large-scale electrification programs and improved cookstove (ICS)...

Rural electrification is believed to contribute to the achievement of the MDG. In this paper, we investigate electrification impacts on different indicators. We use household data that we collected in Rwanda in villages with and without electricity access. We account for self-selection and...

We use subsamples of Cambodia Socio-Economic Survey (CSES) 2004 and 2011 to examine the impact of rural electrification on household consumption, tobacco consumption, and children's education in Cambodia. Dierence-in-Dierences was used to find that rural electrification increased household...