Power before everything: why electricity access is the business story of the decade

Ask business owners in many fast-growing economies to name their biggest operating cost and the answer is often the same: the diesel generator. Unreliable grid power is a tax on every enterprise.

The multiplier

Reliable electricity unlocks manufacturing, cold chains for agriculture, data centres, hospitals and schools. Few investments have such broad knock-on effects across an economy.

What is changing

• Distributed solar and storage reaching businesses directly, behind the meter.
• Mini-grids serving industrial clusters and communities beyond the grid.
• Utility reforms and independent power producers changing how generation is financed.

The finance question

The technology is increasingly affordable. The challenge is matching long-term capital to projects whose customers pay in local currency, through utilities that may struggle to pay on time.

“Before a country can have an AI strategy or an industrial strategy, it needs a power strategy that works.”