Beyond Access Frameworks: Mechanisms of Lived Energy Deprivation in Sub-Saharan Africa

Large-scale electrification efforts in Sub-Saharan Africa have prioritized the expansion of formal electricity access, supported by substantial public and donor investment. Yet dominant energy access frameworks often misdiagnose lived energy deprivation in under-electrified contexts characterized by unreliable supply, high costs, and complex institutional arrangements. Indicator-based tools such as the Multi-Tier Framework capture technical service attributes but obscure how energy-related burdens interact and compound in everyday life. This study identifies the mechanisms through which lived energy deprivation is produced, moving beyond isolated indicators to examine how burdens co-occur and reinforce one another. Drawing on focus group discussions across 14 rural and peri-urban communities in Nigeria and South Africa (84 participants), we combine inductive qualitative coding with co-occurrence analysis to identify recurring configurations of energy-related stressors.

The analysis reveals an interactional system of energy precarity operating through three coupled conversion pathways. First, affordability pressure is converted into compound deprivation through reactive coping strategies, whereby forced trade-offs, psychosocial strain, and time loss interact to erode households’ capacity to pursue or sustain modern energy transitions. Second, reliability failures and high operating costs trigger non-linear transition dynamics, as households revert to traditional fuels or informal substitutes, producing cascading physical, temporal, and environmental burdens despite nominal access. Third, institutional and procedural frictions—manifested through administrative burden, opaque billing, and accountability gaps—act as structural amplifiers, intensifying both affordability and reliability stress by imposing additional time, cost, and emotional demands. These pathways emerge as stable clusters in the co-occurrence matrix, indicating patterned, reinforcing dynamics rather than isolated experiences.

We reconceptualize energy poverty as a dynamic, interactional process rather than a set of isolated deficits, explaining why linear transition models and indicator-based assessments systematically overestimate progress and underestimate vulnerability. Integrating lived mechanisms into energy access planning is essential to avoid mistaking nominal system functionality for meaningful energy access, and to prevent underperforming systems from being labeled as transition successes.