In the News
Electricity News
The ABCs of Electricity Theft: Can Anti-theft Cables Improve Electricity Service?
Electricity service quality is a major challenge in developing countries, undermining both utility performance and consumer welfare. New evidence from the study of a large-scale infrastructure intervention in Karachi, Pakistan, shows that replacing easily tapped wires with anti-theft cables can significantly reduce illegal connections and improve the reliability of power supply.
Solar Power Is Taking Off in Malawi: But Poor Households Need Financial Help to Make It Work for Them
Check out this article from The Conversation on solar power in Malawi and its impact on households.
Incentivizing Grid Reliability in Low- and Middle-Income Countries
On October 14, 2025, an in-person roundtable discussion in Washington D.C. unpacked the power reliability challenge in low- and middle-income countries and pressure-tested ideas from the newly released working paper Incentivizing Reliability: A Framework for Performance-Linked Electricity Improvements. Click here to learn more about our work in this area.
Prepaid meters promise profits for African utilities but success hinges on consumer response
Thomas Klug discusses the evidence surrounding prepaid electricity meter rollout in Africa.
The Energy Access Dividend
The Energy Access Project at Duke in collaboration with the Inter-American Development Bank and Sustainable Energy For All, have developed an Energy Access Dividend for Haiti and Honduras with the aim of quantifying the electrification benefits forgone over a country’s business-as-usual electrification transition.