Why Electrification Has Not Ended Energy Poverty in South Africa

South Africa's electrification drive transformed physical access to electricity, but connection to the grid has not guaranteed reliable, affordable or meaningful energy use. The review "Rethinking Energy Poverty in Rural South Africa: An Integrative Review Through the Capability Approach and Energy Justice," by Mahali Elizabeth Lesala and Patrick Mukumba of the University of Fort Hare, published in the MDPI journal Energies, argues that conventional measures of energy poverty are missing much of what keeps rural households vulnerable.

Drawing together evidence on household welfare, energy justice, multidimensional poverty and social capital, the authors propose treating energy poverty not as a simple absence of electricity but as a dynamic process of household energy vulnerability. Their analysis suggests that affordability, reliability, household income, gender, infrastructure quality, governance and community resources determine whether an electricity connection actually improves health, education, livelihoods and wellbeing.

Electrification Solved the Connection Problem, Not the Energy-Security Problem

South Africa's post-apartheid electrification programme remains a major development achievement. Household access to mains electricity rose from roughly 58.2 percent in 1996 to almost 90 percent by 2023, bringing millions of people within reach of modern energy services. Yet the review shows why access rates alone can create an overly optimistic picture of progress.

Many formally electrified households still face high tariffs, recurring outages and deteriorating infrastructure, forcing them to combine electricity with firewood, paraffin, coal, liquefied petroleum gas and other fuels. Even in 2023, there remained a 12.9 percentage-point gap between households with mains electricity and those using electricity as their primary cooking fuel. The persistence of this gap shows that connection does not necessarily translate into practical dependence on electricity.

Electricity matters because of what households can do with it: cook safely, preserve food, study after dark, operate small enterprises, communicate and reduce exposure to harmful indoor pollution. When supply is unreliable or unaffordable, those capabilities remain constrained even though official access statistics classify the household as electrified.

This helps explain why energy poverty has persisted despite decades of infrastructure investment. The review does not argue that electrification failed; instead, it argues that electrification is only one component of household energy wellbeing. Reliability, affordability and the ability to convert electricity into real improvements in living standards determine whether infrastructure becomes development.

Conventional Metrics May Be Dramatically Underestimating Deprivation

The review argues that how energy poverty is measured determines who becomes visible to policy. Access-based indicators identify whether a household has infrastructure, while expenditure measures ask how much income households devote to energy. Both are useful, but both can miss families that ration consumption because adequate energy is simply unaffordable.

Evidence cited in the review illustrates the scale of the problem. Using a conventional threshold based on actual household spending, one South African analysis identified an energy-poverty rate of about 19 percent. A household-specific measure based on the energy households actually required produced an estimate of roughly 52 percent, more than two-and-a-half times higher.

The reason is straightforward. Poor households often spend less on energy not because their needs are being met cheaply, but because food, transport, school fees and other necessities force them to suppress consumption. In rural communities, the widespread collection of firewood and other non-purchased fuels further weakens expenditure data as a measure of deprivation.

Required-consumption approaches offer a more revealing picture because they estimate what households need rather than simply observing what they can afford to buy. Evidence reviewed by the authors suggests around 52 percent of households could be considered energy poor under this method, with deprivation declining sharply as household income rises. Such measures also distinguish between the incidence, depth and severity of energy poverty, allowing policymakers to identify households experiencing the greatest deficits.

Multidimensional approaches go further by incorporating cooking fuels, reliability, appliance ownership, pollution exposure and other dimensions. But the authors argue that even sophisticated indices remain largely descriptive: they can reveal who is deprived without fully explaining the governance failures, historical inequality and infrastructure conditions producing that deprivation.

Energy Poverty Is Also a Question of Justice, Gender and Governance

The review combines the Capability Approach, which asks what energy allows households to achieve, with energy justice, which asks how energy resources, costs and decision-making power are distributed. That combination shifts attention from household consumption alone toward the institutions and historical structures that shape who receives reliable and affordable energy in the first place.

South Africa provides a particularly stark example. Historical spatial inequality left many rural and predominantly Black communities with weaker infrastructure and fewer economic opportunities. Low-income households connected to the national grid may receive approximately 50 kWh of Free Basic Electricity each month, while comparable households relying on subsidized solar home systems can receive energy equivalent to only around 7.5 kWh, illustrating how policy design itself can generate geographic inequality.

The burdens are also uneven within households. Women frequently carry greater responsibility for cooking, fuel collection and household management, meaning unreliable or unaffordable energy can translate directly into time poverty and reduced opportunities for education or income generation. Older people, people with disabilities and geographically isolated households can face different vulnerabilities that conventional household-level metrics often fail to recognize.

Community resources matter as well. Evidence synthesized in the review suggests that social capital, including community trust, belonging and political trust, can cushion the wellbeing effects of energy deprivation, particularly among poorer households. This does not mean communities can substitute for functioning infrastructure, but it highlights how social networks can affect households' capacity to cope with disruptions and scarcity.

Energy policy cannot be separated neatly from governance. Tariff setting, municipal capacity, infrastructure maintenance, subsidy design and opportunities for community participation all influence whether households remain vulnerable. Energy poverty therefore becomes a question not only of engineering and affordability, but of institutional performance and distributive fairness.

A Just Energy Transition Must Measure Wellbeing, Not Connections

The authors propose an integrated framework linking five areas: structural conditions, energy-system performance, household characteristics, the ability to convert energy into useful opportunities, and eventual welfare outcomes. The framework treats these elements as mutually reinforcing rather than independent, meaning poor energy services can reduce income and education opportunities, while weak household resources can make future energy shocks even harder to absorb.

This systems perspective produces concrete policy implications. Expanding infrastructure remains necessary, but it should be matched by reliable supply, more equitable tariffs, stronger municipal institutions, meaningful community participation, recognition of different household needs and support for productive uses of energy that strengthen livelihoods.

The review points to the potential scale of targeted affordability measures. Modelling cited by the authors suggests that increasing South Africa's Free Basic Electricity allocation for low-income households from 50 kWh to 100 kWh per month could reduce their estimated energy-poverty headcount from around 70 percent to about 23 percent, while an increase to 150 kWh could reduce it to roughly 8 percent. The authors caution that fiscal and generation-capacity constraints would still need separate assessment.

The argument also speaks directly to South Africa's just energy transition. Decarbonization cannot be judged solely by replacing coal with cleaner generation if poor households remain unable to afford, access or reliably use modern energy. The review connects energy vulnerability with poverty, hunger, inequality and sustainable communities, making the issue relevant to SDGs 1, 2, 7, 10 and 11.

There are important limitations. The review included 68 sources, but screening and coding were conducted by a single researcher, no protocol was registered in advance, and English-language academic databases may underrepresent relevant South African grey literature. The authors also acknowledge that their proposed framework remains conceptual and requires empirical testing.

That said, the key policy challenge remains crucial. South Africa has demonstrated that large-scale electrification is possible; the unresolved question is whether electricity systems can reliably expand people's capabilities once the wires reach their homes.