About the research
Despite significant progress over the last 20 years, basic access to electricity in South Africa is by no means stable or guaranteed, and remains one of the largest development issues faced by post-apartheid South Africa. The reasons for inequality in public service delivery, particularly access to electricity by poorer communities, in rural as well as urban settings, are not as well understood as they could be. Knowing more about domestic energy consumption within households can better inform strategies to address fuel demand and poverty. A richer, more policy-relevant picture can be gained by investigating dynamics of electricity access and consumption using reconstructed, complex, large-scale longitudinal data linked to other sources of big data. In their efforts to scale up research opportunities, data services will need to consider the methodological, technical and ethical challenges of preparing, linking and hosting such large-scale data.