Urbanisation and energy consumption in Sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa has the lowest access to modern energy and highest urbanisation and population growth rates in the world. The increasing population and its move towards urban areas are expected to exert pressure on existing energy infrastructures and government budgets, introducing uncertainty in the path that future resource consumption might take. Research on the effects of demographic changes on energy use in Sub-Saharan Africa is scarce, with a few studies that only look at this issue tangentially. This research investigates the effect of urbanisation on total energy consumption and electricity consumption in Sub-Saharan Africa. The study estimates this effect using panel data for 49 Sub-Saharan African countries for the period 1980–2014. The size and significance of the urbanisation variable, measured as the total number of people living in urban areas, is estimated for total energy consumption, total electricity consumption and electricity consumption per capita. To isolate the effect of the urbanisation variable, the analysis controls for several demographic and socio-economic variables. Recognising the political aspects of energy infrastructures and investment, the analysis control for governance, a novel addition in these types of studies. There are two main findings: urbanisation has a positive and significant effect on total energy consumption, the size and significance of this effect varies across country income groups; urbanisation has a negative effect on total electricity consumption and electricity consumption per capita, the size and significance of which varies across country income groups. © 2021 Elsevier Inc.