As COVID-19 spreads in lower-income countries, the continued delivery of health services will depend critically on reliable access to electricity, which health facilities use for functions such as lighting, data management, refrigeration, sterilisation, and provision of running water. While grid connections in sub-Saharan Africa have grown rapidly in recent years, power reliability varies and remains a critical issue that causes substantial losses in firm productivity. In the healthcare sector, a 2013 systematic review finds that in eight countries with data in sub-Saharan Africa (including Kenya), only 34 percent of hospitals had reliable electricity in the week prior to the survey. In this project, Eric Hsu and Anne W. Wambugu will document electricity reliability in rural areas in Kenya and its impacts on healthcare providers.
Electricity reliability is important to the functioning of public institutions and firms of all sizes. During the on-going pandemic, it is particularly important for the continued delivery of health services including testing, treating patients, and administering vaccines. This project has the potential to shape policy by rapidly generating data on electricity reliability at health facilities in rural areas, which tend to have less reliable power and disproportionately service particularly vulnerable low-income communities. This project will unlock existing data from health facilities, which will be shared with policymakers in and outside of Kenya. With COVID-19 threatening to overrun the capacity of healthcare systems in Africa, these data will allow policymakers to rapidly identify where limited resources can be prioritised.
