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How Can We Electrify the Global South
Since the beginning of the century, India has nearly doubled the rate of households connected to electricity, from 56% in 2000 to almost 100% today. This achievement has contributed significantly to reducing the global electricity deficit, which has dropped from 1.4 billion people to 700 million. Now, Nigeria, which currently ranks among the countries with the largest populations lacking electricity, may be on the verge of a similar energy transformation.
In an era marked by increasing global uncertainties, rising climate pressures, and rapid technological changes, energy security and economic growth depend on integrated, flexible, locally established, digitally enabled systems that can attract substantial investment.
This is a daunting goal. However, policymakers and investors show an increasing commitment to achieving it. During three events held last month—the Artificial Intelligence Impact Summit in New Delhi, Climate Week in Mumbai, and the African Union Summit in Addis Ababa—leaders shared experiences and exchanged ideas to support progress.
In our work to expand electricity access, we’ve learned critical lessons that should shape electrification strategies, starting with the importance of integration for scale and resilience. This means that energy must come from diverse sources, and all components of energy systems—transmission, distribution, storage, and end-use—must be planned and managed in a coherent and comprehensive manner.
In Nigeria, the government has mandated distribution companies to obtain 10% of their electricity from integrated generation sources, including 5% from renewable energy. Furthermore, a network composed of interconnected microgrids, integrated with existing infrastructure but currently unreliable, will provide reliable energy access for hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses.
Other countries with financially pressured networks, including India, are looking at this model while seeking innovative solutions of their own. For instance, in 2024, India launched a plan to install solar systems on the rooftops of ten million homes and is working to make integration of these systems into local grids mandatory.
The second important lesson is that countries should adopt digital tools and AI-enabled technologies. While much attention has focused on the environmental issues raised by AI, this technology has also emerged as a powerful solution to enhance energy access and sustainability. With AI and virtual network management, it is now possible to operate complex, distributed systems on a scale that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago.
The Indian state of Rajasthan is experiencing this lesson firsthand. Under India’s “Future Grids” initiative of the Global Energy Alliance, which invests $25 million to support utilities in modernizing their networks, the state has created a digital “twin” of the Jaipur electricity grid and is harnessing AI to provide real-time insights. This data will be used to assess the grid’s condition and identify improvement opportunities, including how to integrate renewable energy sources and battery storage. This initiative, which seems likely to provide more reliable energy access for up to 18 million people, mostly in rural areas, could serve as a model for data-driven public utility management.
A third lesson is that energy access yields the greatest economic and social returns when governments and public utilities collaborate with stakeholders across diverse sectors to ensure the availability of necessary tools, training, and financing for effective use. In Nigeria, initiatives like the Agricultural Revitalization Program and the Education Revitalization Program are equipping farms, schools, and healthcare facilities with access to clean energy and the capacities needed to use it to boost productivity and enhance services.
The Pradhan Mantri Kisan Urja Suraksha evam Utthaan Mahabhiyan program in India promotes the use of solar energy in agriculture, enhancing farmers’ income and energy security while simultaneously reducing emissions. The PM-KUSUM program, launched in 2019, has converted over two million irrigation pumps previously running on diesel to solar power, thereby improving the livelihoods of over 600,000 farmers.
The final essential lesson is that emerging economies can overcome perceptions of high risk and mobilize private capital, including from foreign investors. The key lies in strengthening policy frameworks, providing clear market signals, encouraging successful business models, and highlighting early success stories.
Setting ambitious, time-bound national goals with transparent tracking helps mobilize private capital and sustain engagement from entrepreneurs. This has been the case in India, where the government’s plan to provide electricity to every household, announced in 2017, has led to strong investments in modernizing the existing grid and expanding microgrids, thus providing energy to underserved or inadequately served areas.
Africa appears to be taking this lesson seriously. So far, 29 governments on the continent have committed to providing reliable energy access to 300 million people by 2030. By presenting national energy agreements with time-bound goals to the World Bank and the African Development Bank, these countries have signaled to investors that they are ready and willing to increase investment in energy infrastructure. Nigeria alone has mobilized over a billion dollars to expand energy access.
New markets will always require bold investors in the early stages. However, supportive policy frameworks, along with pilot projects that validate concepts, and incentivizing, risk-reducing financing, can attract the pioneers needed for new markets.
The interconnected microgrid project in Nigeria exemplifies this. It began with just four grids serving about 6,000 homes and businesses—barely enough to demonstrate the initiative’s technical and commercial viability. Coupled with funding from the World Bank, projects are quickly becoming ready for implementation. The country now expects the initiative to attract hundreds of millions of dollars in private investments.
If nations hope to achieve rapid electrification, they must take these lessons seriously. Instead of relying on gradual efforts or one-size-fits-all models, they should aim to integrate distributed and centralized systems, maximize the use of AI-enabled tools, and send credible signals that attract private capital. India and Nigeria have shown what is possible, and other countries should follow their lead.
