Secondary School Electrification in Western Kenya

We estimate the impact of the rollout of a Kenyan program that connected the vast majority of Kenyan secondary schools to the electricity grid on the number of students taking a secondary completion exam and their exam performance. Using administrative data from western Kenya and a differences-in-differences approach, and controlling for school and time fixed effects, we find no significant impact on either the number of students taking the exams, or on exam scores. We explore secondary school energy usage via an original school survey and find that electricity access is still unreliable for many schools, with over half of schools reporting a blackout in the last three days.

Funding: This research was supported by AidData at the College of William and Mary and the USAID Global Development Lab through cooperative agreement AID-OAA-A-12-00096. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of AidData, USAID, or the United States Government.