Madagascar’s electricity access rose to 42.5% of population in 2024.

Higher is better. A larger share of people with power means more households can light their homes, refrigerate food and charge phones, so higher is better. Madagascar's latest figure, for 2024, is 42.5% of population, up from 39.4% of population a year earlier, a gain of 3.1 percentage points. The 2024 reading is the highest since 2015. The lowest in that span was 22.9% of population in 2016, so access has risen by almost twenty percentage points since then.

Why it matters. At 42.5% of population, more than half of Madagascar's people still live without electricity. Those households rely on firewood, charcoal, candles or kerosene for cooking and light, which costs time and money and adds indoor smoke. Shops, mills and workshops without a grid connection depend on generators or manual work, which limits what they can produce. Extending the grid and off-grid solar to the unserved majority is therefore one of the state's largest development tasks.