Over the Last 3 Decades, Nearly Everyone in Bangladesh Gained Access to Basic Electricity
“In one of the more remarkable marches of human progress, Bangladesh has reached the point of near-universal electricity access for its citizens.
Coupled with the rapid electrification has been one of the greatest single declines in the poverty rate of a nation ever seen, falling from 44.2% in 1991 to 18.7% in 2022.
In 1991, only 14% of the nation had access to electricity. By 2021, 99% had access.
Granted, half of these households are considered according to Our World in Data to have lower tier access, which accounts for home lighting and charging mobile phones at least 4 hours a day, but the other half are considered as having higher tier access, defined as the added capacity to power high-load appliances (such as fridges) for more than eight hours a day.
Bangladesh is the world’s most densely populated large country with a density of 3,020 per square mile. As the twelfth densest country in the world, the 11 above Bangladesh are all microstates whose combined land area would not even equal half the size of the smallest state in Bangladesh.
To put this into perspective, (a rather silly perspective) if one wanted to reduce the population density of Bangladesh to that of Mongolia, its borders would have to include both all of Africa and all of Eurasia. That’s how crowded Bangladesh is, and what these amazing reductions in poverty truly mean to global human flourishing.”
-via Good News Network, January 21, 2025
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Note: This is the kind of thing I mean when I say that very, very few people in the West know the degree to which absolutely massive societal progress has been happening in a lot of different developing countries.
Especially around access to infrastructure and access to electricity.
The quality of life improvements to electricity access are massive.
It’s not just access to phones/the internet (already a huge deal that opens up massive channels of communication and information-sharing).
It’s being able to preserve food because you have a fridge, meaning you get to spend less money on food/have less food waste/run fewer errands/have way more flexibility around food.
It’s being able to do things after dark, because you have a lightbulb. It’s being able to work late, make more of your time.
It’s less air pollution because people can use electricity instead of burning fuel for things like heat/light/cooking. (Yes I know these things often use fuel or natural gas still, but they can be done with electricity, and a lot of developing countries are skipping over a natural gas/etc. phase and straight into renewables.)
Hell, it’s safety. I had a friend when I was younger who was from southeast Asia. She was horribly injured when she was a kid because her family only had kerosene oil lamps that had to be manually refilled. If her family had had access to electricity, that never would have happened.
It’s infrastructure for heating, air conditioning, and water access. It’s so, so many things. It’s huge.
amhrancas 