In Summary: Liberian Economist Samuel P. Jackson claims that less than 20% of the Liberian population has access to electricity. We have checked the claim by reviewing all relevant data including statistics from the Liberia Electricity Corporation (LEC) and found his claim to be incorrect.
On June 18, Liberian Economist Samuel Jackson appeared on OK FM 99.5 and claimed that less than 20% of the population in Liberia has access to electricity. He made the claim while discussing the investment challenges of the country and highlighted what he said needs to be done to improve productivity in the country.
Mr. Jackson made the claim at around one hour thirty-seven minutes timestamp (1hr:37minutes) of the over two-hour live stream.
Claim
Said Jackson: “Less than 20% of the population has access to electricity.”
Rating Justification
To fact-check this claim, we first messaged Mr. Jackson about the source he relied on to make the claim.
He replied with a screenshot of the World Bank graph showing the 2021 data on the percentage of the population having access to electricity in Liberia, stating that while the data shows 29.8% of the population have access to electricity, his calculations show that “only 20% (of the population) are on the grid”.
However, he maintained that less than 20% of the population has access to electricity.
He said his claim on OK FM was about the percentage of the population having access to electricity and not restricted to those connected to the national power grid operated by the Liberia Electricity Corporation (LEC). The LEC is a public service-providing entity created by an Act of Legislature to produce and supply affordable and reliable electricity to the country.
According to Mr. Jackson, “There are more people with access to electricity (in Liberia) through generators than on the LEC grid”.
So, we also searched the website of the LEC for data on the population’s access to electricity. At the bottom of the home page of the website, there is a section that shows statistics. The data show that about 1,003,508 Liberians have access to electricity.
We Calculated this number to find the percentage of the 5.2 million population as recorded by the Liberia Institute of Statistics and Geoinformation Service (LISGIS). The percentage is 19.29% — which is the total percentage of the population that is connected to the LEC grid.
However, this percentage of the population connected to the LEC grid is not the total number with access to electricity. This is because people are connected to other sources of electricity including companies’ power grids, personal solar power systems, and generators.
In addition to the LEC data, we also conducted further research to find additional information about access to electricity in the country. We found the 2022 Population and Housing Census Report. Page 17 of the document shows that 25.3% of households are using electricity from LEC, 4.8 percent were using generators and 5.7 percent were using solar panels in Liberia.
We also found a World Bank graph that shows statistics on access to electricity in Liberia from 2007 to 2022. The graph shows that 31.8% of the population in Liberia has access to electricity as of 2022.
Also, the International Monetary Fund report released in 2022 states that about 27% of the population in Liberia has access to electricity.
Conclusion
While LEC data shows that about 19.29% of the population has access to electricity, connections to the LEC power grid are not the only access to electricity in Liberia.
There are other sources of electricity including personal generators, solar power, and power provided by concessions and big companies. This is backed by the LISGIS 2022 census report, and statistics from the World Bank and the IMF showing that over 20% of the population in Liberia have access to electricity.
This report is produced with funding from the USAID Media Activity. The funder has No say in the editorial decisions leading to the production of this content