Energy Cafe: Can the largest African country meet its energy security goal by 2030?
According to recent estimates on combating global energy poverty, more than half a billion people will still lack access to electricity by 2030. A relatively significant fraction will be residing in Nigeria.
Nigeria, Africa’s biggest country in terms of both economy and population size, is home to over 200 million people, yet in 2020 113 million of its inhabitants lived without access to grid electricity. To put this into perspective, the country’s installed electricity capacity is at the same level as Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland and a city of roughly half a million people. Why does Nigeria, home to 400 times more people than Scotland’s second-largest city, have such low levels of electricity access, earning it the title of ‘the world’s most underpowered country’? What are the prospects and how long will it take the country to plug its energy infrastructure gap?
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