Economics – Industry & Resources · Editorial
By Moakanyi Magazine · China-in-Africa · June 2026
The standard headline counts the unconnected – around 600 million Africans without electricity, the large majority in sub-Saharan Africa. That number is real, and barely moving: the IEA notes fewer than 19 million gained access in each of 2023 and 2024, down from 23 million in 2019. But the headcount misses a second cost, borne by people who already have a connection. For firms and households on the grid, the binding constraint is often not access at all – it is reliability.
The hidden tax of an unreliable line
Power that flickers behaves like a tax on production. The IEA reports that blackouts can cut firms' employment rates by an estimated 5 to 14 percentage points, pushing businesses back to manual processes and away from equipment they cannot trust to stay on. High and uncertain power costs do the same work more quietly, holding firms below the scale at which automation pays. A connection that fails at the wrong moment is, for a workshop or a clinic, barely a connection at all.
The cost of bad power is not measured in dark homes but in machines firms cannot afford to switch on.
This is the lens that gives China-Africa energy work its real weight. The question for a new plant or line is not only how many households it lights, but whether it firms up supply enough to change what local firms dare to invest in – a second shift, a heavier machine. The IEA puts the bill for universal, reliable access at about US$15 billion a year, and that figure only pays back if the power is steady enough to build a business on.
Reliable supply is the precondition for productivity; unreliable supply is just a more expensive way to stay poor.
Counted as a jobs-and-firms story rather than a connections story, energy access changes what good looks like. The win is the moment a manufacturer hires because the line no longer drops. By that measure the project that firms up an existing grid can matter as much as the one that extends it.
Sources: IEA Financing Electricity Access in Africa, World Bank (electricity and jobs)
