Mapping Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Electrification and Electricity Reliability across Africa Using Nighttime Lights

Electricity accessibility and reliability remain uneven across Africa, constraining economic growth, public services, and quality of life. Despite substantial progress in electrification efforts, a large portion of Africa’s population still lacks access to reliable and affordable electricity, which hinders socio-economic development and exacerbates energy poverty. Leveraging spatial methods and geospatial analysis, this study explores the spatial distribution of electricity accessibility, assesses the reliability of energy supply networks, and identifies impacted areas affected by disaster events. By integrating nighttime satellite imagery with energy statistics, meteorological reanalysis, and socioeconomic indicators, this dissertation develops a unified remote sensing framework to assess the power system performance across equity, reliability, and disaster recovery. Using multi-scale spatial analysis spanning from pixels, districts and provinces to national aggregates, this work characterizes where access lags, when reliability occurred, and how quickly service rebounds after major storms. This study addresses the challenges of data scarcity and social complexity, employing spatial analysis to map electrification levels, identify vulnerable areas, and assess energy resilience. The framework provides policy-oriented indicators that (i) map subnational disparities and distinguish uniform deprivation from genuine convergence, (ii) show detrended night-lights anomalies move in step with utility performance, enabling routine reliability monitoring, and (iii) standardize recovery measurement across events while revealing within-district pockets of persistent dimming. While limitations include coarse spatial sampling, cloud and compositing effects, incomplete ground truth, and limited visibility of low-radiance off-grid systems, the results demonstrate that open, scalable indicators can support SDG-aligned tracking, operational dashboards, and post-shock recovery planning. This dissertation also discussed practical extensions for future research to improve attribution, validation, and target equitable energy investments.