Nigeria illustrates just how severe electricity-system inefficiencies can become. In Q1 2026, Nigeria’s electricity distributors recorded an average ATC&C loss of 37.44%, meaning more than a third of the electricity supplied was effectively lost through technical and commercial inefficiencies or failure to collect payment. That is substantially higher than Kenya’s roughly 21–23% system losses.
The Nigerian number is particularly revealing because it goes beyond electricity physically disappearing from the network. About 20.76% was attributed to technical and commercial losses, while roughly 21.05% represented collection losses, electricity that was billed but not paid for. Transmission losses add another layer, with Nigeria’s transmission loss factor reaching 7.96% in Q1 2026, above the regulatory target of 7%.
Across West Africa, the problem is broader than Nigeria. Studies of the regional power network suggest technical losses average around 9%, while non-technical losses can reach roughly 21%, pushing combined losses above 30% in many systems. Other assessments similarly find that several West African utilities experience transmission and distribution losses above 35%, reflecting ageing networks, inadequate metering, illegal connections and weak revenue collection.
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This puts Kenya in an interesting position. At 21–23%, Kenya’s losses are undeniably high by international standards, but they are not at the extreme end of the African spectrum. Nigeria’s effective loss rate is roughly 1.6–1.8 times Kenya’s, depending on which Kenyan figure and Nigerian metric are compared. And because Nigeria’s ATC&C measure includes collection losses, the comparison is not perfectly like-for-like, which is important when presenting the numbers.
The broader lesson is that electricity can become extraordinarily expensive when generation, networks and revenue collection all leak value simultaneously. Kenya still has a major efficiency problem to solve, but the comparison with Nigeria and parts of West Africa shows why reducing losses can be as important as building new generation: every unit of electricity that stops disappearing is effectively new supply without building a new power plant.
