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  • Final Evaluation Brief
  • March 2026

Improving Electricity Quality and Reliability in Benin

Grid upgrades expanded capacity, but reliability gains were not sustained

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Program Overview

MCC’s $391 million Benin Power Compact (2017-2023) funded the $281 million Electricity Distribution Project which supplied new and rehabilitated substations, expanded distribution lines, and built a national dispatch center to modernize Benin’s electricity network. The project aimed to improve electricity quality and reliability so that businesses and public and social services could operate longer hours, reduce reliance on costly backup energy, lower product losses, and improve productivity for electricity users.

Download the Spanish translated evaluation brief.

Evaluator Description

MCC commissioned Mathematica to conduct an independent final impact evaluation of the Electricity Distribution Project. Full report results and learning: https://evidence.mcc.gov/evaluations/index.php/catalog/214.

Key Findings

Electricity Quality and Reliability

  • The intervention built key infrastructure, increasing distribution capacity and utility’s ability to manage electricity flows.
  • The project also reduced outages and voltage fluctuations in the period following commissioning of new infrastructure.
  • Upstream genera­tion shortfalls and disruptions in imported electricity contributed to renewed reliability challenges, limiting the sustainability of these gains over time.

Household and Business Productivity

  • Short-term improvements in electricity reliability allowed households to spend more time in productive activities such as working in a family business and studying.
  • While operating days did not change for businesses, some public institutions reported improved productivity due to more consistent electricity, including longer operating hours for schools and better services for health facilities.

Costs of Poor Electricity

  • Large businesses reported fewer outage-related revenue losses over time (such as spoiled products or inactive workers), though impacts were uneven and not sustained across locations. Small businesses experienced mixed outcomes.
  • Businesses continue to rely on generators during outages, and the cost of backup generators has increased.

Evaluation Questions

This final performance evaluation was designed to answer the following questions:

  1. 1
    To what extent was the project implemented according to plan (in terms of quantity and quality of outputs)?
  2. 2
    Did the project achieve its stated objective in the time frame and magnitude expected? Why or why not?

Detailed Findings

Upgrades to Grid Infrastructure

The Electricity Distribution Project substantially upgraded Benin’s distribution network under the revised compact scope. By compact close, nearly all planned infrastructure had been completed, energized, and transferred to the utility, including a fully operational national dispatch center supported by a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition system.

These upgrades increased the technical capacity of the distribution network and improved the utility’s ability to monitor and manage electricity flows. In Greater Cotonou, reconfiguration of the 63 kV network into a loop increased redundancy and enabled better load balancing. Administrative and operational data show that the upgraded infrastructure allowed the utility to redistribute loads across substations and accommodate rapid growth in electricity demand.

Electricity Quality and Reliability

The project improved electricity quality and reliability in the period following commissioning of the new infrastructure. Measures of voltage quality showed short-term improvements, including reductions in undervoltage incidents in areas served by upgraded substations. The changes were attributed to shorter distances between distribution substations and customers, reduced transformer overloading, and enhanced system control.

Figure: Bar charts showing quarterly network-wide SAIFI (outages per customer) and SAIDI (hours per customer) from 2019 to 2023. Both indicators decline overall after 2019, with fluctuations, and show lower levels in 2023 compared to baseline.

These gains were not sustained. In 2023–2024, outages and voltage fluctuations increased again as electricity demand grew and supply constraints intensified. Stakeholder interviews and system data indicate that upstream generation shortfalls and disruptions in imported electricity contributed to renewed reliability challenges.

Changes in electricity quality and reliability translated into modest and uneven effects on households, businesses, and public institutions. Households and public institutions in some project areas reported fewer outages and voltage fluctuations in the period following commissioning which led to households spending more time on things like family businesses or studying and longer operating hours for public institutions like schools. These effects were more pronounced in northern project areas, where baseline electricity service was poorer.

In contrast, businesses did not consistently experience longer operating hours. Despite short-term improvements in electricity quality and reliability, many firms continued to face outages and voltage instability, particularly during peak demand periods. Increased distribution capacity, while critical, was not sufficient to deliver sustained gains in electricity availability for users in the period assessed.

Productivity and Business Losses

As planned, civil society and private sector actors used grants through four open data challenges to analyze government data and produce data-driven tools for the public and government offices.

Large businesses reported fewer outage-related losses over time, including reduced equipment damage, spoiled products, and inactive workers, as well as fewer disruptions to production processes. These changes coincided with periods of improved elec­tricity quality but were not uniform across locations.

Figure: Figure - Number of outages in past 7 days - showing changed before and after energization. The horizontal axis represents months since energization. A vertical red line at zero marks the month of energization. The vertical axis represents the number of outages in the past seven days. Data have been adjusted so that zero represents an average level of outages. Each household is represented by a small dot. The figure shows substantial variation in outages both before and after energization. Two trend lines summarize the overall pattern: • A straight line (linear fit) shows the average trend over time. • A smooth curved line shows short-term changes around that trend. Before energization, the average number of outages is slightly below zero and increases gradually as energization approaches. At the moment of energization, there is a sharp increase in outages. After energization, outages initially decrease, then rise again several months later, before leveling off near zero.

Small businesses experienced more mixed outcomes. Some reported improvements in electricity quality, while others faced increased exposure to voltage fluctuations and continued disruptions. Across businesses, reliance on generators and other backup energy sources remained widespread, limiting reductions in operating costs. Household-level evidence suggests modest reductions in equipment damage for some users, but no consistent improvements in hours spent working on a family business or studying. Overall, the evaluation finds no sustained, systemwide gains in productivity or reductions in small business losses, such as spoiled products, inactive workers, and damaged equipment, attributable to improved electricity service.

MCC Learning


  • Problems with sequencing and interdependency management in project design can severely delay project execution.

  • Lack of early sustainability planning heightens the chance that infrastructure gains erode quickly without adequate maintenance and staffing strategies.

  • Projects should consider pairing infrastructure investments with complementary investments in reform that improve how infrastructure is planned, operated, and maintained.

Evaluation Methods

Figure illustrates the methods used for the impact and performance evaluation: Quantitative data collection included ITS analysis and pre-post survey. ITS analysis included 13 waves of phone surveys with households, small businesses, and large businesses. A pre-post survey included: - a baseline sample of 1496 households with 280 surveyed in the final survey - a baseline sample of 756 small businesses with 132 surveyed in the final survey Qualitative data collection methods included focus group discussions and key informant interviews.

This evaluation is an impact and a performance evaluation, providing robust confidence in the results. Quantitative and qualitative methods included interrupted time series (ITS) analysis (impact evaluation), pre-post analysis (performance evaluation) and thematic analysis (performance evaluation). The ITS approach estimated the impact of project activities on reliability and quality measured with end users. The pre-post and descriptive methods measured changes in electricity availability, reliability, quality (at the grid-level). A descriptive, pre-post approach complimented the ITS findings with longer-term analysis and thematic analysis to explore common themes across documents, key informant interviews (KIIs) and focus group discussions (FGDs), allowing the evaluation to understand how implementation processes unfolded, what factors influenced them, and the perceptions of stakeholders and public service providers on challenges to implementation.

2026-002-3105