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Tuesday, February 16, 2021

1.7 billion people have less electricity than residents of Gaza

There is a major project underway to build a natural gas line from Israel's Leviathan field directly to Gaza, which would provide much cheaper electricity for the enclave. The EU and Qatar are contributing to this initiative to help Gazans get access to more electricity, less expensively than today.

Gazans get about 14 hours a day of electricity today. This is about 203 megawatts of electricity for Gaza's two million residents, which comes out to about 99 watts available per Gazan on the average.

Given how much media attention is given to Gaza's electricity woes, one might think that Gaza is in the very bottom of any list showing how much electricity is available per person worldwide.

That is not true - at all.

Wikipedia has a list of how much power is available per capita for every country. It gets Gaza wrong, claiming .01 watts per person, which is completely false.

But assuming it is accurate for other countries, we see that there is more electricity per person in Gaza than in many other countries, including some that might surprise you like the Philippines or Morocco. 


Country/Region

Average power per capita

(watts per person)

 Somalia

2

 Chad

2

 Guinea-Bissau

2

 Burundi

3

 Central African Republic

3

 Haiti

4

 Sierra Leone

4

 South Sudan

5

 Rwanda

7

 Niger

8

 Liberia

8

 Ethiopia

9

 Uganda

9

 Malawi

9

 Madagascar

9

 Timor-Leste

9

 Yemen

10

 Burkina Faso

10


 Tanzania

11

 Benin

11

 Comoros

13

 Eritrea

14

 Gambia

14

 Nigeria

16

 Solomon Islands

17

 Afghanistan

18

 Mali

18

 Togo

18

 Guinea

18

 Kenya

19

 Mauritania

22

 Vanuatu

25

   Nepal

26

 Senegal

27

 Kiribati

27

 Cameroon

30

 Ivory Coast

30

 Sudan

31

 Ghana

33

 Angola

37

 Myanmar

38

 Congo, Republic of the

43

 Sao Tome and Principe

43

 Djibouti

45

 Lesotho

48

 Bangladesh

49

 Papua New Guinea

49

 Mozambique

50

 Korea, North

56

 Tonga

56

 Zimbabwe

58

 Cambodia

58

 Pakistan

64

 Nicaragua

65

 Laos

65

 Sri Lanka

70

 Samoa

72

 Guatemala

73

 Honduras

78

 Zambia

84

 Bolivia

90

 Morocco

93

 Cabo Verde

94

 Syria

95

 Dominica

95

 Philippines

99

 Over 1.7 billion have less electricity than Gazans have!

I'm not saying that Gazan shouldn't have 24 hours of reliable, cheap electricity a day. Everyone should. But as usual, the media presents Gaza as being one of the worst places on Earth, and there are a lot of people who would love to live in Gaza.

(h/t Tomer Ilan)