Publication:
Shedding Light on Electricity Utilities in the Middle East and North Africa: Insights from a Performance Diagnostic

Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Files in English
English PDF (3.31 MB)
880 downloads
English Text (226.54 KB)
39 downloads
Published
2018-01
ISSN
Date
2018-01-23
Author(s)
Bacon, Robert
Estache, Antonio
Mahgoub Hamid, Mohamad
Editor(s)
Abstract
The electricity sector in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is in the grip of an apparent paradox. Although the region is home to the world's largest oil and gas reserves and has been able to maintain electricity access rates of close to 100 percent in most of its economies, it may not be able to cater to the future electricity needs of its fast-growing population and their business activities. Primary energy demand is expected to rise at an annual rate of 1.9 percent through 2035, requiring a significant increase in generating capacity. Investments have not been rising fast enough to meet that requirement.
Link to Data Set
Citation
Bacon, Robert; Camos, Daniel; Estache, Antonio; Mahgoub Hamid, Mohamad. 2018. Shedding Light on Electricity Utilities in the Middle East and North Africa: Insights from a Performance Diagnostic. Live Wire;2017/83. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/29228 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.
Associated URLs
Associated content
Report Series
Report Series
Live Wire
Other publications in this report series
  • Publication
    Exploiting the Potential of Energy Efficiency in Residential Buildings
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-10-31) Singh, Jas; Mori, Takeshi
    The residential sector makes up about 70 percent of building energy demand. This demand is expected to grow rapidly over the next decade. Although the sector offers huge potential for energy efficiency gains, a range of barriers impedes the realization of these benefits. Fortunately, a wealth of global experience shows how these challenges can be overcome through a combination of sound planning, strong policy and regulatory frameworks, well designed financing and incentives, robust institutional and market development, and accessible information to scale up residential energy efficiency.
  • Publication
    Shared Infrastructure for Clean Hydrogen
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-08-31) World Bank
    Studies of the development of clean hydrogen have often focused on the production side. Infrastructure built and used for storage and transportation warrants more attention. Among the topics that should be assessed are system design, operation, integration, and ownership; market design and governance; and planning. This Live Wire examines case studies and literature on the infrastructure for hydrogen hubs, with an emphasis on the benefits of shared infrastructure. Given the breadth of hydrogen production and infrastructure, the focus is on renewable hydrogen production for domestic use and for export after conversion to ammonia.
  • Publication
    Decarbonizing Ammonia and Nitrogen Fertilizers with Clean Hydrogen
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-03-12) World Bank
    Synthetic fertilizers are essential to sustaining the world’s population, but their production is responsible for 1.8–2.4 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Clean hydrogen holds growing potential (amid falling costs) to decarbonize fertilizer production. Hydrogen produces synthetic ammonia, a building block of most fertilizers. With the fertilizer market as a reliable off-taker, this shift could support the overall expansion of clean hydrogen, even as it boosts global food security. However, this transition may require adjustments, including changes in fertilizer types and modifications to existing subsidy schemes.
  • Publication
    A Responsible Data Sharing Framework for the Distributed Renewable Energy Sector
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-09-25) Shrestha, Ashish; Pedersen, Anders; Janardhanan, Neelima; Hanley, Mollie
    In collaboration with Nigeria’s Rural Electrification Agency, the World Bank is piloting a Responsible Data Sharing Framework (RDSF) for the distributed renewable energy sector. The framework was developed over the course of 12 months in 2024, through collaboration with some 25 stakeholders from government and the private sector. It embodies a shared ambition to turn data into better outcomes for the communities served. At its core, an RDSF for the sector sets out how appropriate data about projects can be shared in ways that are efficient and effective. In 2023, the World Bank approved the Nigeria Distributed Access through Renewable Energy Scale-up (DARES) project. DARES aims to bring new or improved access to clean energy to 17.5 million people and replace more than 280,000 petrol and diesel generators in the process. The RDSF pilot is part of DARES.
  • Publication
    Measuring the Climate Resilience of the Power Sector: Harmonization, Not Homogenization
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-08-31) World Bank
    Although by its very nature climate resilience can never be fully “standardized”, the development and mainstreaming of climate resilience metrics can benefit from greater consensus around key topics. Areas such as metric categories, methodologies, and reporting frameworks can be aligned through coordinated efforts among regulators, utilities, and other stakeholders, enabling more consistent, effective, and scalable resilience planning across the sector. The key is harmonization and not homogenization.
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections

Related items

Showing items related by metadata.

  • Publication
    Shedding Light on Electricity Utilities in the Middle East and North Africa
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2018) Bacon, Robert; Camos, Daniel; Estache, Antonio; Hamid, Mohamad M.
    The electricity sector in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) suffers from a major paradox. Indeed, while the region continues to hold the world’s largest oil and gas reserves and has been able to maintain electricity access rates of close to 100 percent in most of its economies, it may not be in a position to cater to the future electricity needs of its fast-growing population and their business activities. The region’s primary energy demand is expected to continue to grow at an annual rate of 1.9 percent through 2035, requiring a significant increase in capacity. Investments have not been rising fast enough to meet those expectations. The main point of this report is to provide quantitative evidence of how improving utility management and more accurately targeting smaller subsidies would free up enough resources to make the needed investments and operate the sector at a lower cost. These management and policy changes would make electricity production and consumption more affordable for the region’s taxpayers and could even make it more affordable for the poorest. They would also ease the transition toward renewable energy sources, reducing the dependency on imports for some economies and, for the economies that export oil and gas, extending the asset life of their nonrenewable resources.
  • Publication
    Quasi-Fiscal Deficits in the Electricity Sector of the Middle East and North Africa
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017-12) Estache, Antonio; Camos, Daniel; Hamid, Mohamad M.
    The annual electricity investments needed in the Middle East and North Africa region to keep up with demand have been estimated at about 3 percent of the region's projected gross domestic product. However, in most economies of the region, the ability to make those investments is limited by fiscal and macroeconomic constraints. This paper demonstrates that the solution is readily available: by improving the management and performance of the region's utilities, more than enough resources could be freed up to make the investments needed. The paper presents the first evaluation of the size and composition of the quasi-fiscal deficit associated with the management of the electricity sector in 14 economies in the Middle East and North Africa region. The estimations are for 2013. They show that the average quasi-fiscal deficit is 4.4 percent of gross domestic product (but goes down to 2.9 percent if Lebanon, Djibouti, Bahrain, and Jordan are excluded). Only five economies have a quasi-fiscal deficit below 3 percent of gross domestic product (Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Qatar, and the West Bank), and hence would not be able to finance the average investment requirement through elimination of inefficiencies. For most economies, the main driver of the quasi-fiscal deficit is the underpricing of electricity, which costs on average 3.2 percent of gross domestic product (but 2.2 percent without Lebanon, Djibouti, Bahrain, and Jordan). Commercial inefficiency comes next, at an average cost of 0.6 percent of gross domestic product. Technical and labor inefficiencies represent, respectively, 0.4 and 0.2 percent of gross domestic product.
  • Publication
    Infrastructure and Employment Creation in the Middle East and North Africa
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2013-01-17) Estache, Antonio; Ianchovichina, Elena; Bacon, Robert; Salamon, Ilhem
    The state of national labor markets has always been a concern for governments and development agencies such as the World Bank. Key labor market indicators, such as the rate of unemployment, send signals about the health of an economy and mirror citizens' attitudes. Being gainfully employed is an important aspect of an individual's well-being both financially and socially, as 'initial failures in finding a job can lead to persistent joblessness, a loss of interest in further schooling, delayed family formation, mental distress, and negative manifestations of citizenship' (World Bank 2007). Increased expenditure on infrastructure projects has a short-run effect on employment creation as more workers are hired to build infrastructure. These jobs last only during the investment phase of the project, and, without a continuous injection as in a stimulus-type program, such jobs will be temporary. However, the investment program will have created a larger stock of infrastructure capital and this permanent addition facilitates additional growth in the economy. The extra demand from this incremental growth creates more jobs, and these tend to be permanent. Furthermore, an employment experience in an infrastructure-related employment program, even if temporary, might improve the chance of being re-employed at a later date. This study capitalizes on the World Bank's long-standing knowledge on infrastructure, employment, and growth and applies it to the case of MENA to assess the employment creation potential of infrastructure investment.
  • Publication
    Do Private Water Utility Operators Care about Regulatory Agencies in Developing Countries?
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017-04) Bertomeu-Sanchez, Salvador; CamoS, Daniel; Estache, Antonio
    This paper shows that the creation of an independent regulatory agency is often not a necessary or sufficient condition to help attract private participation in the operation and financing of the water and sanitation sector in developing countries. However, the odds of an impact are significantly higher for Latin American and Caribbean countries and, to a lesser extent, Eastern European countries, than for any other region. Higher income levels and higher prices are also correlated with higher effectiveness of independent regulatory agencies in attracting private sector financing. Analysis of the impact on various types of public-private partnership contracts shows that, at the margin, independent regulatory agencies are irrelevant in general, for the contract choice, except for greenfield projects, for which such agencies may be counterproductive at the margin.
  • Publication
    Job Creation through Infrastructure Investment in the Middle East and North Africa
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-08) Estache, Antonio; Ianchovichina, Elena; Foucart, Renaud; Garsous, Grégoire; Yepes, Tito
    In the next 10 years or so, the infrastructure sector has the potential to generate significant employment. This paper estimates annual job creation of about 2.0 million in direct jobs and 2.5 million in direct, indirect and induced infrastructure-related jobs just by meeting the infrastructure investment needs of about 6.9 percent of gross domestic product (about US$106 billion) for the Middle East and North Africa region on average. The breakdown in expected needs is 11 percent in developing oil exporters, 6 percent in oil importing countries, and 5 percent in the Gulf Cooperation Council oil exporters. Needs are particularly high in electricity and roads. While important, infrastructure job creation will not resolve the region's unemployment problem alone and its job creation potential varies greatly across countries. Moreover, the current ability to finance and hence meet the infrastructure needs varies significantly across countries. Oil importers are likely to fall short under business as usual scenarios. In a region in which the public sector is the main source of infrastructure financing, fiscal choices will thus matter to job creation through infrastructure. But there are more challenges, including the governance of job creation, and the proper targeting and costing of subsidies for job creation and the (re)training programs needed. Managing expectations will also matter, as infrastructure jobs will help but will not solve the region's unemployment and underemployment problems.

Users also downloaded

Showing related downloaded files

  • Publication
    World Development Report 2011
    (World Bank, 2011) World Bank
    The 2011 World development report looks across disciplines and experiences drawn from around the world to offer some ideas and practical recommendations on how to move beyond conflict and fragility and secure development. The key messages are important for all countries-low, middle, and high income-as well as for regional and global institutions: first, institutional legitimacy is the key to stability. When state institutions do not adequately protect citizens, guard against corruption, or provide access to justice; when markets do not provide job opportunities; or when communities have lost social cohesion-the likelihood of violent conflict increases. Second, investing in citizen security, justice, and jobs is essential to reducing violence. But there are major structural gaps in our collective capabilities to support these areas. Third, confronting this challenge effectively means that institutions need to change. International agencies and partners from other countries must adapt procedures so they can respond with agility and speed, a longer-term perspective, and greater staying power. Fourth, need to adopt a layered approach. Some problems can be addressed at the country level, but others need to be addressed at a regional level, such as developing markets that integrate insecure areas and pooling resources for building capacity Fifth, in adopting these approaches, need to be aware that the global landscape is changing. Regional institutions and middle income countries are playing a larger role. This means should pay more attention to south-south and south-north exchanges, and to the recent transition experiences of middle income countries.
  • Publication
    Doing Business 2014 : Understanding Regulations for Small and Medium-Size Enterprises
    (Washington, DC: World Bank Group, 2013-10-28) World Bank; International Finance Corporation
    Eleventh in a series of annual reports comparing business regulation in 185 economies, Doing Business 2014 measures regulations affecting 11 areas of everyday business activity: Starting a business, Dealing with construction permits, Getting electricity, Registering property, Getting credit, Protecting investors, Paying taxes, Trading across borders, Enforcing contracts, Closing a business, Employing workers. The report updates all indicators as of June 1, 2013, ranks economies on their overall “ease of doing business”, and analyzes reforms to business regulation – identifying which economies are strengthening their business environment the most. The Doing Business reports illustrate how reforms in business regulations are being used to analyze economic outcomes for domestic entrepreneurs and for the wider economy. Doing Business is a flagship product by the World Bank and IFC that garners worldwide attention on regulatory barriers to entrepreneurship. More than 60 economies use the Doing Business indicators to shape reform agendas and monitor improvements on the ground. In addition, the Doing Business data has generated over 870 articles in peer-reviewed academic journals since its inception.
  • Publication
    World Development Report 2006
    (Washington, DC, 2005) World Bank
    This year’s Word Development Report (WDR), the twenty-eighth, looks at the role of equity in the development process. It defines equity in terms of two basic principles. The first is equal opportunities: that a person’s chances in life should be determined by his or her talents and efforts, rather than by pre-determined circumstances such as race, gender, social or family background. The second principle is the avoidance of extreme deprivation in outcomes, particularly in health, education and consumption levels. This principle thus includes the objective of poverty reduction. The report’s main message is that, in the long run, the pursuit of equity and the pursuit of economic prosperity are complementary. In addition to detailed chapters exploring these and related issues, the Report contains selected data from the World Development Indicators 2005‹an appendix of economic and social data for over 200 countries. This Report offers practical insights for policymakers, executives, scholars, and all those with an interest in economic development.
  • Publication
    Classroom Assessment to Support Foundational Literacy
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-03-21) Luna-Bazaldua, Diego; Levin, Victoria; Liberman, Julia; Gala, Priyal Mukesh
    This document focuses primarily on how classroom assessment activities can measure students’ literacy skills as they progress along a learning trajectory towards reading fluently and with comprehension by the end of primary school grades. The document addresses considerations regarding the design and implementation of early grade reading classroom assessment, provides examples of assessment activities from a variety of countries and contexts, and discusses the importance of incorporating classroom assessment practices into teacher training and professional development opportunities for teachers. The structure of the document is as follows. The first section presents definitions and addresses basic questions on classroom assessment. Section 2 covers the intersection between assessment and early grade reading by discussing how learning assessment can measure early grade reading skills following the reading learning trajectory. Section 3 compares some of the most common early grade literacy assessment tools with respect to the early grade reading skills and developmental phases. Section 4 of the document addresses teacher training considerations in developing, scoring, and using early grade reading assessment. Additional issues in assessing reading skills in the classroom and using assessment results to improve teaching and learning are reviewed in section 5. Throughout the document, country cases are presented to demonstrate how assessment activities can be implemented in the classroom in different contexts.
  • Publication
    Digital Africa
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13) Begazo, Tania; Dutz, Mark Andrew; Blimpo, Moussa
    All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.