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

Electricity shapes the quiet hours of daily life, transforming how homes are lit, how food is preserved, and how work is done after sunset. At MYRIAD, we look at the statistics of human lives to understand how these profound shifts touch individual days. For Tanzania, measuring the share of the population with access to electricity reveals a long journey across three centuries, mapping the infrastructure of modern existence against the passage of time for millions of people.

The historical arc moves slowly across generations. In the 1800s estimate 0 percent of homes had electricity, a baseline that crept upward through the decades as the 1810s estimate 0.01, the 1820s estimate 0.02, the 1830s estimate 0.03, the 1840s estimate 0.04, the 1850s estimate 0.05, the 1860s estimate 0.06, the 1870s estimate 0.07, the 1880s estimate 0.08, and the 1890s estimate 0.09 slowly gave way to the 1900s estimate 0.1. Progress continued gradually through the 1910s estimate 0.68, the 1920s estimate 1.26, the 1930s estimate 1.84, the 1940s estimate 2.42, and the 1950s 3. In later decades, growth accelerated through the 1960s 6, the 1970s 9, the 1980s 12, the 1990s 17.5, the 2000s 23, and the 2010s 35.5.

Today, in the 2020s, electricity at home in Tanzania stands at 48 percent, ranking #153 of 157 countries. Looking forward, projections anticipate continued expansion through the 2030s projection 52, the 2040s projection 56, the 2050s projection 60, the 2060s projection 64, the 2070s projection 68, the 2080s projection 72, the 2090s projection 76, and the 2100s projection 80. For someone born there across these changing eras, the presence or absence of power defines the very rhythm of home. Where do YOU rank among everyone ever born?