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The impact of electrification on rural attractiveness in Senegal

A reliable and affordable access to electricity has become one of the basic needs for humans and is, as such, at the top of the development agenda. It contributes to socio-economic development by transforming the whole spectrum of people's lives - food, education, health care; it spurs new economic opportunities and thus improves livelihoods. Using a comprehensive dataset of pseudonymised mobile phone records, provided by the market share leader, we analyse the impact of electrification on the attractiveness of rural areas in Senegal. We extract communication and mobility flows from the call detail records (CDRs) and show that electrification has a small, yet positive and specific, impact on centrality measures within the communication network and on the volume of incoming visitors. This increased influence is however circumscribed to a limited spatial extent, creating a complex competition with nearby areas. Nevertheless, we found that the volume of visitors between any two sites could be well predicted from the level of electrification at the destination combined with the living standard at the origin. In view of these results, we discuss how to obtain the best outcomes from a rural electrification planning strategy. We determine that electrifying clusters of rural sites is a better solution than attempting to centralise electricity supplies to maximise the development of specifically targeted sites.