Adapting Spatial Frameworks to Guide Energy Access Interventions in Urbanizing Africa

The extension of electricity into rural areas has been the main focus of efforts to achieve universal access to reliable, affordable, and modern energy by 2030. On the African continent and elsewhere, however, rapid urbanization has produced new patterns of human settlement that blur the distinction between rural and urban. As a case study of Kenya demonstrates, access metrics aggregated at the rural or urban level do not equip governments and their partners to properly identify or target sites for electrification. Spatialized frameworks and data that define space along a rural–urban continuum or as urban catchment areas can improve policy makers’ understanding of the specific barriers to access that communities face.