Ghana has to ration electricity so that everyone can watch the World Cup - Vox: Ghana is actually one of the better-off countries on this score — roughly 72 percent of its population has access to electricity. In neighboring Ivory Coast, by contrast, it's 59 percent. In Tanzania, only 15 percent of people have reliable access to electricity.
Add it all up, and some 590 million people across sub-Saharan Africa don't have any power at all. Among other things, that's a major public-health issue: Without electricity, many households turn to wood stoves, whose indoor pollution now kills 4.3 million people per year (worldwide), more than AIDS and malaria combined.