End Energy Poverty

Where there is no electricity, there is no light, no access to the tools that power business and only limited access to modern healthcare or education. Providing reliable electricity is the first step toward helping a community lift itself from poverty. So crucial is this single factor that The Rockefeller Foundation has made ending energy poverty a priority around the world.

A steady power source transforms every facet of human life. Families can illuminate their homes. They can communicate with the outside world. Children can study at night. Simple appliances can save hours of drudgery on household chores. Lit streets are safer and more conducive to commerce.

At the same time, access to power can boost the irrigation, crop yields and productivity of local agriculture. Farmers can protect crop values with cold storage or increase their returns with post-harvest processing. Small businesses of all kinds can expand and connect with outside markets.

Electricity, in other words, is the foundation on which modern communities and businesses run and thrive. And yet, more than 840 million people still live without access to power, and hundreds of millions more suffer frequent outages. Even with the current rate of growth in power distribution, 650 million people will still lack access to electricity by 2030 – the vast majority of them in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Governments and philanthropic groups increasingly recognize the ties between poverty and a lack of access to energy. Still, the collective efforts of the international community remain too slow and incremental. Bringing reliable, affordable power to those now in need of it is the single best way to fight poverty across the world.

Since the dawn of the electric age, a great divide has widened between those with access to power and those without. In 1930s America, just 10% of rural households in the U.S. were electrified. The federal government helped fund a massive, decades-long effort to bring electricity to the countryside that American cities enjoyed. That pathway to prosperity has become even more vital in the age of globalized commerce and the internet. Societies locked out of the energy economy are simply unable to rise out of poverty. In much of the world, regions or countries suffering from extreme poverty almost always suffer as well from a lack of steady power. We cannot remedy the one without pushing as well to remedy the other.