Urbanization of energy poverty? The case of Mozambique

What is the impact of the unprecedented scale and pace of urbanization in the global South on the evolution of energy poverty incidence? Remarkably enough, urban population growth and energy poverty are mainly studied separately from each other in different strands of the literature. We argue that there is much to be gained in studying these phenomena in their interdependence. To illustrate this, we analyze for the case of Mozambique the relationship between spatial variation in population density and three commonly used indicators of energy poverty over time. We think that the case of Mozambique exemplifies the future development of Africa's energy poverty situation in many respects. Our analysis makes use of two newly constructed datasets with household level information that originate from national household welfare surveys as well as an own survey for Mozambique's capital city Maputo. The data show that over time, and especially in urban areas, energy poverty is decreasing in terms of consumption quantities and access to modern energy fuels, but increasing in terms of energy expenditure shares. Also, we show that by largely ignoring transport energy use, the national welfare surveys typically overestimate energy consumption poverty while underestimating energy expenditure poverty to a substantial degree. Finally, based on a multiple non-linear regression analysis we find, after controlling for spatial sorting of households, that if population densities rise, energy poverty levels in terms of modern fuel use first fall and then increase – thus following a U-shaped pattern. In contrast, the relationship between population density and energy expenditure poverty follows an inverted N-shaped curve. This suggests that urbanization processes in poor countries like Mozambique may not lead to an unequivocal reduction of energy poverty rates, in line with existing evidence on urbanization of poverty in Africa.