Nigeria is now the largest economy in Africa with a 2013 GDP estimate of US$ 510.0 billion, recently surpassing South Africa after rebasing the GDP calculations. Nigeria’s growth, however, continues to be severely constrained by an insufficient supply of reliable electricity. In a 2009 study, 97% of all Nigeria’s firms experienced, on average, 196 hours of outages per month, which is equivalent to approximately 8 days. As a result, almost all firms and upper income households operate their own generators to mitigate the effects of outages. Nigeria has an installed on--‐grid generation capacity of 6,800 MW, but only generates a daily average of 3,600 MW due to gas supply constraints and seasonal hydro. In contrast, South Africa--with less than a third of Nigeria’s population of 168.8 million-has an installed generation capacity of more than 40,000 MW or 0.78 kW per capita.