Claim: “When I came into office in 2018, only 16% of Sierra Leoneans had access to electricity,” said President Julius Maada Bio
Verdict: False. Data from Sierra Leone’s statistical agency and the World Bank suggest in 2018, access to electricity was 21% and 23%, respectively.
Full Text
Electricity is the engine of economic growth and development across the globe. Sierra Leone, like many other countries, has been moving towards increasing access to electricity for more of its citizens.
For post-war Sierra Leone, one of the objectives has been to rebuild the damaged infrastructure and to consolidate the infrastructure projects for the growing population.
Electricity is not just a luxury; on the path to achieving the Millennium Development Goals, the UN Millennium Project listed access to electricity as one of the catalysts to achieving all other goals by 2015.
Fast forward to the development of the Sustainable Development Goals; Energy has its pillar, Pillar 7, which captures electricity.
Meanwhile, in Sierra Leone, access to electricity is a political subject; candidates and presidents have used it to drum up support and sell their ideas for political capital. Governments have been pressured to sustain electricity, sometimes at a very high cost.
However, it is worth noting that whether you go by figures from government or international partners, access to electricity is still a major challenge in Sierra Leone, with more than half of the population still in the dark.
How many people had access to electricity pre-2018?
In the quest to show progress in access to electricity, there have been references to various contradictory figures by current government officials to highlight how many people had access to electricity before they took over the government in 2018.
Regarding this point, President Julius Maada Bio said: “When I came into office in 2018, only 16% of Sierra Leoneans had access to electricity. We have taken that number up to 31% and increased peak load electricity consumption in many parts of the country.”
He made the statement last month in his Christmas address to the nation as posted on the website of the President’s Office. While the President made a live delivery of his statement on national television, it has also been reshared on Youtube by SN Radio (9:45-10:06), claiming over 7,000 views as of press time.
Verification
DUBAWA found the comments by the president to be controversial, especially when other government officials had given different figures in the past. So this fact-checker set out to interrogate the matter and determine whether the data provided by the president is accurate.
Two months before the President’s speech, DUBAWA found that the Minister of Energy, Alhaji Kanja Sesay and Minister of Information, Mohamed Rahman Swaray, were quoting and agreeing on a much lower figure, claiming that the current government met access to electricity at 12%. Their statement contradicted the President’s figures, which stated that access was at 16%.
Both ministers made their respective claims during a weekly Facebook live hosted by Mr Swaray on October 13, 2022, known as “Talk to d Minister” (watch from 10:00- 10:35).
This Facebook Live has since garnered over 5,700 views, with a growing number of comments and shares.
Government officials, including the Director of Communication, Micheal Berewa, are also doubling down on these claims, making them viral. Mr Berewa posted the claim on his Facebook wall with well-edited graphics giving out the details.
What does the official data say?
While the president quoted 16%, the state’s data agency – Statistics Sierra Leone, was reporting that the number was approximately 21%. According to Page 162 of the 2018 Sierra Leone Integrated and Housing Survey,
“Table 6.137.1 shows approximately 21.0 per cent of households have electricity in their dwellings via a grid system (national), with an average of 15.5 hours a week of electricity.”
This survey was released in October 2019. The President gave his speech in Parliament seven months later, ignoring the latest data from the statistics agency.
What does the World Bank data say?
The World Bank has a rich repository of data on many economy-related areas, from finance and business to energy. Their data has been perfected over decades of research, with methodological transparency and the availability of raw datasets for an independent analysis.
The government of Sierra Leone has also used World Bank data to develop or analyze policies, lending strong credibility to its work.
While President Bio said in his 2022 Christmas address to the nation that his government met access to electricity at 16%, World Bank said in 2017 that access to electricity was at 23.4%. In 2018 which is the year President Bio took over, the figure was 26%, as shown in this graph below:
The Energy Progress Report was done by the World Bank in collaboration with the International Energy Agency, International Renewable Energy Agency, The United Nations Statistics Division and the World Health Organization.
Why is this important?
These claims will be at the centre of campaign messaging in the months leading up to the election; fact-checking them is important to prevent misinformation or minimize its impact.
The researcher produced this fact-check per the DUBAWA 2023 Kwame KariKari Fellowship partnership with Epic Radio in Sierra Leone to facilitate the ethos of “truth” in journalism and enhance media literacy in the country.
