Some crises announce themselves loudly, while others unfold quietly, suffocating people long before the world names them. Africa’s energy crisis belongs to the latter. It is spoken of in terms of infrastructure, investment gaps, and megawatt targets, but at its core, this crisis is fundamentally a matter of life and death.
The continent’s chronic energy poverty is not merely an economic barrier. It is a public health emergency of staggering scale, claiming millions of lives, weakening health systems, deepening gender inequality and limiting human potential before it even begins to grow. The statistics are numbing in their repetition, but the human cost is fresh every day.
The absence of electricity, clean cooking, and reliable power is undermining Africa’s ability to survive, not just develop. And unless policymakers reframe energy access as an urgent health intervention, not only a development goal, the continent will continue to lose lives that were entirely preventable.
The invincible pandemic in African homes
According to the World Health Organisation, 2.3 million people die every year from illnesses linked to household air pollution, with Africa accounting for the majority of these deaths. The cause is brutally simple: 900 million Africans still cook with charcoal, firewood, or dung, releasing toxic smoke that damages lungs, weakens immune systems and increases the risk of pneumonia, heart disease and chronic respiratory conditions.
In many African households, cooking a meal requires inhaling the equivalent of smoking two to ten cigarette packs a day. Babies strapped to their mothers’ backs breathe the same smoke; studies have shown that newborn exposure increases the likelihood of stunting, low birth weight, and long-term cognitive impairment.
The consequences fall disproportionately on women. According to UN Women, African women spend over 200 hours each year collecting fuel, time taken from education, income generation, rest, and dignity. Clean cooking is not merely an energy upgrade; it is a pathway to gender equality and better health outcomes.
Yet despite decades of warnings, progress remains painfully slow. Clean cooking receives less than 1% of global energy finance, a paradox when its health benefits rival some of the largest public health interventions of the last century.
Clinics cannot save lights when the lights go out
Energy poverty is equally devastating within Africa’s health facilities. New analysis from Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL) and the World Bank shows that 60% of health clinics in sub-Saharan Africa lack reliable electricity, and nearly a quarter have no electricity access at all.
This means:
- No lighting for nighttime deliveries
- No refrigeration for vaccines, insulin or blood
- No oxygen concentrators for emergency care
- No sterilisation equipment
- No electronic medical records
- No ability to perform even basic emergency procedures after dark
In facilities without electricity, maternal mortality rates are three times higher. Newborn mortality rises sharply when incubators and radiant warmers cannot operate. In many rural clinics, surgeons rely on phone torches when backup generators fail. This is not a metaphor; it is a daily reality.
Electricity is not a luxury for health systems; it is their foundation.
If Africa is to have resilient healthcare, it must first have reliable power.
The double burden of energy poverty on children
hildren bear the highest cost of Africa’s energy shortfall. Pneumonia, primarily driven by air pollution, remains among the leading killers of children under five on the continent. UNICEF warns that vaccine spoilage rates remain unacceptably high because 40% of rural health facilities cannot keep medicines consistently refrigerated.
And at home, millions of children study under kerosene lamps, candlelight or phone torches, increasing risks of burns, poisoning and respiratory illness.
Energy poverty harms a child’s lungs, brain, education, safety, productivity, and life expectancy, a cradle-to-adulthood assault. It is a generational health crisis that quietly determines who survives and who does not.
This is why in a previous article, we argued that Africa’s clean-energy transition must prioritise households and health facilities before heavy industry.
Electricity enables life and not merely economic growth.
Why framing energy as a health issue changes everything
For decades, African governments and global institutions have evaluated energy access through the lens of infrastructure. How many megawatts were added? How many kilometres of transmission lines were built? How many households received first-time grid access?
But when energy is seen through a health lens, the questions change.
Suddenly the focus shifts to:
- How many maternal deaths were averted because clinics gained reliable electricity?
- How many children avoided respiratory disease due to clean cooking?
- How many vaccines remained viable because fridges stayed powered?
- How many health workers could perform procedures after dark?
- How many schools achieved higher learning outcomes due to better lighting?
This reframing matters because it aligns energy with Africa’s political priorities: child survival, universal healthcare, gender equality, productivity, and human capital.
Energy is not a sectoral issue; it is the bloodstream of public health.
What African governments must do now
Therefore, the next decade must prioritise four urgent interventions.The continent cannot achieve SDG3 (good health) without achieving SDG7 (energy access).
1. Power every health facility by 2030
SEforALL estimates that electrifying all health facilities in sub-Saharan Africa is feasible within five years using a combination of grid upgrades, mini-grids, and solar + battery systems.
This should be non-negotiable. No mother should die because a clinic is dark.
2. Treat clean cooking as a public health investment
Africa loses more lives to household air pollution than to HIV, malaria and tuberculosis combined.
And yet, financing remains microscopic.
Governments must adopt clean-cooking transition plans, create incentives for LPG, electric cooking, ethanol, and improved biomass technologies, and integrate these solutions into health policy.
Energy + Health = Survival.
3. Expand decentralised energy for community health
Mini-grids, solar home systems and standalone power for clinics offer the fastest route to saving lives. Many rural regions will not receive grid access soon enough.
We have consistently argued that decentralised energy is a health solution, not merely an energy one.
4. Integrate Energy Metrics into Health Reporting
Ministries of Health should track:
- Electricity uptime
- Health-facility energy reliability
- Vaccine spoilage linked to power outages
- Birth outcomes related to electrification
- Clean cooking adoption in maternal households
What is not measured cannot be saved.
Africa cannot treat energy access as a future goal
Africa’s energy crisis is not a 2050 problem. It is a right-now emergency affecting every clinic, school, mother and newborn. A continent that is central to the world’s clean-energy transition cannot remain in the dark at home.
The data is undeniable. The human cost is unbearable. The time for treating energy as a “development target” has passed.
Africa must treat energy as the lifesaving public health intervention it is.
Because light is not just a service.
It is survival.
