Guiding Action: A User-centric Approach to Define, Measure, and Manage Electricity Access

The role of electricity in human development is well established as being key to improved quality of life, safer environments, greater communication and connectivity, better educational services, and increased economic opportunities. Despite it having such a fundamental role, nearly one billion people across the world are deprived of electricity access, and many more suffer with poor and limited access. Limited definitions of electricity access have led to improper measurement and monitoring and inadequate management, resulting in poor targeting of efforts by governments, enterprises, and investors. This in turn has adversely affected the pace of improvement. Based on a survey of the literature and policy discourse on the subject in recent years, the authors argue that multidimensional, multi-tier, multi-locale energy access can help not just to better define, but also to better monitor and manage electricity-access provision. While the multidimensional approach to energy access has been featured in the literature lately, no attention has been paid to the integration of this approach into planning and action. In this regard, we are proposing that an end-user-centric approach helps guide planning, execution, course correction, and operations, to achieve universal energy access while keeping the objective of overall human development at its core.