Yemisi Izuora
A world bank data has revealed about one billion people across the globe lack access to electricity supply.
The World Bank’s database, claims that a total of 1,030billlion people worldwide are currently without electricity, out of which Nigeria has about 75 million of her people in dire need of electricity.
“India came 1st lowest with 269 million people without electricity and Nigeria ranked 2nd lowest on the list, with 75 million people in need of electricity, according to the data.
Ethiopia came 3rd lowest with 68 million, while Bangladesh was ranked 4th lowest with 63 million people. Other countries of the world shared a total of 555 million people yet to have access to power supply.
In 2014 around 15 percent of the world’s population had no access to electricity. Nearly half were in rural areas of Sub-Saharan Africa, and nearly a third were rural dwellers in South Asia.
In all, 86 percent of people without electricity lived in rural areas, where providing infrastructure is more challenging. Of the remainder in urban areas, most were in Sub-Saharan Africa, the data showed.
South Asia has driven global declines in the share of the rural population without access to electricity, with just 28 percent of rural dwellers lacking electricity in 2014, compared with 68 percent in 1991, while the urban rate fell from 18 percent to 3 percent.
An exception is Sub-Saharan Africa, where electrification has not kept up with population growth, 154 million more people in rural areas lacked access in 2014 than in 1991. Similarly, the number of people in urban areas without access rose from 58 million in 1991 to about 108 million in 2014.
In 2017, just four countries – India, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Bangladesh are home to about half of all people who lack access to electricity, the data showed.