Mpholo, M. et al. (2018). Rural Household Electrification in Lesotho. In: Mpholo, M., Steuerwald, D., Kukeera, T. (eds) Africa-EU Renewable Energy Research and Innovation Symposium 2018 (RERIS 2018). RERIS 2018. Springer Proceedings in Energy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93438-9_8
Despite serious efforts of the Lesotho Government, Lesotho Electricity Company (LEC) and other stakeholders, the level of rural household electrification and affordability are still low. Whereas in 2015 about 72% of urban households were grid-connected, this was only true for 5.5% of rural households. Furthermore, the vast majority of rural households use fuel wood, while electricity use, where available, represents a small share of the domestic energy consumption. The LEC data shows that the average consumption per household has decreased by over 60% between 2001 and 2016 in urban households. This indicates that the bulk of new connections are to the rural poor households. This is plausible given that majority of households perceive electricity and other commercial sources of energy to be more expensive than the traditional biomass. Therefore, the paper discusses this existing status quo with regard to rural electrification using data from the major players such as LEC, Rural Electrification Unit and Bureau of Statistics.