Electricity at Home in Botswana: 1800 to Today (and Tomorrow)

To understand the statistics of human lives in Botswana is to trace how light enters a home across generations. Every percentage point in this dataset represents real households transitioning from darkness into illumination, altering how families cook, study, and gather after sunset. Behind these figures are the quiet rhythms of daily existence, measured not in abstract infrastructure, but in the tangible capacity of a community to power its own future. It is the shift from the flicker of a flame to the steady glow of a bulb.

The historical arc spans three centuries of gradual change. In the 1800s estimate 0 and 1810s estimate 0.01 set a baseline of absolute darkness. This crept upward through the 1820s estimate 0.02, 1830s estimate 0.03, 1840s estimate 0.04, 1850s estimate 0.05, 1860s estimate 0.06, 1870s estimate 0.07, 1880s estimate 0.08, and 1890s estimate 0.09. Progress remained minimal through the 1900s estimate 0.1, 1910s estimate 0.68, 1920s estimate 1.26, 1930s estimate 1.84, and 1940s estimate 2.42, before shifting in the 1950s 3, 1960s 6, 1970s 9, 1980s 12, 1990s 17.5, and 2000s 23.

In the 2010s 35.5, access expanded further, leading to the 2020s 48 % — ranking #123 of 157 countries. If you were born in Botswana in 1900 it was 0.1 %, your domestic reality was almost entirely devoid of electrical grids, whereas a life lived today experiences nearly half of all households wired. This transformation redefines the boundaries of modern domestic life, moving toward a 2100s projection 80. This shift expands horizons for education, communication, and industry within a single lifetime.

Explore the data to compute your own parallel lives on MYRIAD.