Learning in the Dark

While access to electricity is ramping up across the world, the regional disparity in electricity is still large. Particularly in education, electricity is a vital resource for learning. The United Nation’s fourth Sustainable Development Goal aspires to provide a quality education for all. The sub-goal of that SDG relates to directly to electricity access in primary schools.

The most recent data from 2017 released by UNESCO puts the global average for primary school access to electricity at 69 percent. Only 4 percent of primary schools in Sierra Leone had access to electricity, compared to China and Germany, where 100 percent of primary schools were reported to have access to electricity. Regionally the area with the most limited access to electricity is in sub-Saharan Africa.