plate 312 · 2023 data

More Malawians go online than have electricity at home

Share of people online vs share with electricity at home, 207 countries, 2000–2023. Solid dots are Sub-Saharan Africa.

Africa's century
  1. 1. By 2100, more than 1 in 3 people will be African
  2. 2. Nearly half the world's under-25s will be African by 2100
  3. 3. DR Congo is projected to outgrow the US by 2100
  4. 4. Kinshasa will soon be bigger than Paris and London combined
  5. 5. Two-thirds of the world's mobile money moves in Africa
  6. 6. Volcanic heat makes nearly 45% of the power Kenya generates
  7. 7. Africa's solar imports more than doubled since early 2024
  8. 8. DR Congo mines three-quarters of the world's cobalt
  9. 9. Most people in Africa are still offline
  10. 10. Africa formally recycles less than 1% of its e-waste
  11. 11. Ethiopia added over a third of Africa's new renewable power
  12. 12. Nigeria's cities now hold more people than Japan's
  13. 13. Sudan now has the world's most people displaced at home
  14. 14. Nigeria now has almost 25 million more people than Brazil
  15. 15. Six of the ten fastest-growing big cities are African
  16. 16. Africa now has more hungry people than Asia
  17. 17. Six in ten child deaths now happen in sub-Saharan Africa
  18. 18. Rwanda spread electricity faster than any country since 2014
  19. 19. Nigeria now eats more rice than Japan
  20. 20. More sub-Saharan Africans now have mobile money than bank accounts
  21. 21. Sub-Saharan Africa's cities now hold more people than Latin America's
  22. 22. DR Congo tripled its copper mining in ten years
  23. 23. Nitrogen dioxide over Khartoum fell 39% after war began
  24. 24. Countries mostly without electricity fell from 33 to 15
  25. 25. Seven in ten West African mobile money accounts sit idle
  26. 26. Nigeria became the third-biggest sender of students abroad
  27. 27. Guinea overtook Australia as the world's biggest bauxite miner
  28. 28. DR Congo passed Chile in refined copper
  29. 29. Burkina Faso now sends half its exports to the UAE
  30. 30. Nouakchott's mobile internet sped from Africa's slowest to top 30
  31. 31. Nigeria now imports more solar panels than generators
  32. 32. Zimbabwe climbed to fourth among the world's lithium miners
  33. 33. Services now employ twice as many Ghanaian women as farms
  34. 34. Sub-Saharan Africa doubled its grain, mostly by farming more land
  35. 35. Sub-Saharan Africa added more rural people than the whole world
  36. 36. France fell from first to third among Côte d'Ivoire's suppliers
  37. 37. China's car sales to Ethiopia are now mostly electric
  38. 38. Guinea rose from 17th to second for investment in Africa
  39. 39. Africa now mines three-quarters of the world's manganese
  40. 40. Tanzania rose from no graphite to world's third-biggest miner
  41. 41. DR Congo has more babies each year than the EU
  42. 42. More Malawians go online than have electricity at home
18.0%

Malawians online in 2023, more than the 15.6% with electricity at home. Malawi has been above the line every year since 2020.

36 of 43

Sub-Saharan countries where the share online is at least half the share with power at home, 2023. In 2005: none.

32.3%

Sub-Saharan Africans online in 2023, up from 2.0% in 2005. Namibia and Burkina Faso are above the line too; Chad sits on it.

Source: World Bank, World Development Indicators: individuals using the internet (ITU) and access to electricity (World Bank SDG 7.1.1), 2023
the numbers & method

Claim types Fact · Estimate

World Bank, World Development Indicators, edition of 8 Oct 2026: IT.NET.USER.ZS, individuals using the internet, % of population (ITU data; for many African countries the latest years are ITU estimates), and EG.ELC.ACCS.ZS, access to electricity, % of population (World Bank, SDG 7.1.1, from household surveys and modelled between surveys). Read from the World Bank API via the progrss vault (GUIDELINES §4.11; WDI has 21 value checks, 0 mismatches). The Sub-Saharan Africa dot (unlabelled; pick it under "Where's your country?") is the World Bank's own regional aggregate (internet from 2005). Every country with both values in a year is shown for that year (181 to 203 countries a year, 207 in all); missing years are left out, never filled. The two measures differ: electricity counts people living in a household with power; internet counts people who used it in the last three months anywhere, for example on a phone charged elsewhere, so a country can sit above the line. Counts (progrss calculation, descriptive, no link claimed): of the 43 Sub-Saharan countries with both values in 2005 and 2023, 0 had an online share at least half their powered share in 2005 and 36 in 2023; the median ratio of online share to powered share rose from 0.066 to 0.709. Above the line in 2023: Malawi (18.0% online, 15.6% with power), Namibia (63.7%, 56.7%), Burkina Faso (25.4%, 21.7%) and Libya (82.1%, 73.2%, where power access fell from 99.8% in 2000). Chad sits on the line (12.0%, 12.0%); before 2019 only Liberia (2009) and Lesotho (2017) were briefly above it. Malawi has been above it every year since 2020. 2024 is left out: electricity for Malawi and South Sudan repeats its 2023 value, and Burkina Faso jumps from 21.7% to 34.0%. Survey-based electricity figures can jump between surveys (Malawi 18.0% in 2018, 11.2% in 2019). Licence: WDI CC BY 4.0.

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