Geospatial Framework for Estimating Household Electricity Demand for Urban Infrastructure Planning in Select African Countries

Access to reliable and affordable energy is the backbone of advanced economies all over the world. Such an access is limited in Sub-Saharan African countries such as Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa due to lack of inadequate energy generation infrastructure. Infrastructure planning for energy generation requires accurate estimations of potential energy demand profiles. Such demand profiles are lacking in many developing countries all over the world. This paper presents a geospatial framework for estimating household electricity demand that could inform infrastructure-planning tools. This is an extension of our initial effort to estimate household electricity demand for Uganda. This paper presents power demand estimates for four African countries - South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, and Uganda. Electricity demand estimates are generated using three (low, average, and high) appliance usage profiles. The analyses indicate a deficit of about 22,630 MW (South Africa), 20,213 MW (Nigeria), 4,153 MW (Kenya), and 2,508 MW (Uganda) compared to the current installed capacity for the high usage profile scenario.