Electric Service and Developing Countries

By
Branko Terzic

Sometimes answers can be found in unlikely places from unlikely sources. Take the question of “Why, deep into the 21st century, are there still over 700 million people without electric service?” as an example. Electrification has been named the greatest engineering accomplishment of the 20th century. Yet, of the world’s 7 billion people, only 2 billion have adequate service, 2.6 have inadequate or intermittent service and the rest none.

I have written about this issue in the past as have other energy economists and engineers. What is unusual is to find the topic addressed in a popular psychology best-seller. In this case in the currently popular and much discussed “self-help” book “12 Rules for life: An Antidote to Chaos” by Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, a psychologist and university professor.

In Chapter 12 “Rule 10: Be Precise in Your Speech” Peterson starts a discussion about obsolescence in laptop computers and then observes that the computer is a “a very small part of a greater whole.”

Elaborating on that theme Peterson writes that the laptop “…is fed, for example, by a power grid whose function is invisibly dependent on the stability of a myriad of complex physical, biological, economic and interpersonal systems.” This is something energy economists know explicitly and is not new or news.

But, Peterson adds a new factor, frequently overlooked.

“All this is made possible by an even less visible element: the social contract of trust the interconnected and fundamentally honest political and economic systems that make the reliable electric grid a reality. 

Its surprising that a psychologist would know that and even write about. Peterson concludes, correctly in my opinion, that these necessary systems “…hardly exist at all in corrupt third-world countries so that the power lines, electrical switches, outlets…are absent.” All due, according to Peterson to the “…lack of trust characteristic of systematically corrupt societies.” 

This reflects my own opinion that electric service is not missing in developing countries today because of low incomes, dispersed populations, high costs or lack of investors. It’s been mentioned that in Sun-Saharan Africa 72% of the public have mobile telephones while only 27% have electricity service. How is it then that the state-owned electric systems cannot bring power to these rural areas but cell phone operators are able to build towers in those same areas and supply power to them 24 hours a day and 7 days a week?

The answer, as Peterson postulates, is that electric service is missing because of the lack of progressive regulatory regimes in those countries which would gain the trust of investors and consumers alike. It’s as simple as that.