Electricity sector reforms have transformed the structure and organization of the sector worldwide. While outcomes of reforms in developed and developing countries have been extensively examined, there is limited analysis of the reforms in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). This paper analyses the performance of electricity sector reforms in 37 SSA countries between 2000 and 2017. We use a stochastic frontier analysis approach to estimate a multi-input multi-output distance function to assess the impact of reform steps and institutional features on indicators of investment and technical efficiency. Results indicate a positive correlation between reforms and installed generation capacity per capita, plant load factor, and technical network losses. The presence of an electricity law, sector regulator, vertical unbundling, and private participation in the management of assets were positively correlated with reform performance. Perceptions of non-violent institutional features such as corruption, regulatory quality and governance effectiveness do not seem to have had a significant effect, but perceptions of political stability, violence, and terrorism influenced reform outcomes. We conclude that a workable reform in SSA involves vertical unbundling with an electricity law, a regulator, and private ownership and management of assets where feasible. However, positive outcomes go hand in hand with higher technical network energy losses which indicates higher investment in the generation segment than in the network segment. Hence, emphasis should be placed on decoupling the energy losses from power generation.

Transmission and distribution networks are capital intensive segments of the electricity sector and are generally considered natural monopolies. Due to their non-competitive nature, these are subject to independent regulation to prevent the abuse of monopolistic power and to induce competitive behaviour. Effective economic regulation of the electricity networks has become a key target in most developed economies after the 1980s. In Norway, incentive regulation and efficiency benchmarking were introduced in 1997. In Norway, the electricity grid is divided into three levels, namely, central, regional and distribution networks. In this paper, we study two overlooked aspects when analysing the performance of electricity networks: vertical integration and ownership structure. We use a stochastic frontier analysis approach to analyse the performance of Norwegian electricity distribution utilities for the period 2007–2014. We observe that vertical integration between distribution and regional transmission implies higher cost inefficiencies. This indicates that the efficiency gains due to separate management of the networks exceed the economies of coordination from vertical economies of scope. In addition, we find that council ownership entails higher efficiencies. This could be explained by the state having an interest in high-voltage electricity networks, rather than low-voltage ones, and the decentralised model from which the now centralised system was once developed.