Published: May 25, 2026
Last updated: August 29, 2026
On April 7, 2026, the Managing Director of the Liberia Electricity Corporation, Mohammed Sherif, spoke at the Ministry of Information regular press briefing and highlighted progress made in Liberia’s electricity sector over the past year.
Fact Check Report By: Precelia H. George | LMEP Fact Checking Fellow
Among the key statements made during the briefing, Sheriff claimed that electricity access nationwide had increased from about 32% to 38%.
The World Bank defines access to electricity as the percentage of the population with access to electricity, including both grid and off-grid connections that provide households with basic electric power services.
The Claim
An excerpt of Sheriff’s claim reads: “Electricity access has increased from about 32 percent to 38 percent nationwide.”
Rating Justification
To verify this claim, we reviewed a 2025 data published by the World Bank on electricity access in Liberia, titled “NATIONAL ENERGY COMPACT FOR LIBERIA”
According to this report, approximately 32.7% of Liberia’s population has access to electricity. Of this number, the report indicates that 25 percent are connected to the LEC grid, while 7.7 percent rely on off-grid sources.
We also reviewed a 2026 World Bank Liberia update on the country’s energy sector and Mission 300 implementation.
According to this report, between January and December 2025, approximately 81,776 new household connections were added, reaching nearly 376,000 additional people with electricity access through World Bank-financed projects and support from development partners.
Using Liberia’s estimated population of about 5.5 million people, the additional 376,000 people who gained electricity access represents roughly 6–7% of the population. This increase closely aligns with Sheriff’s statement that national access rose from about 32% to 38%.
Additionally, we also reviewed a September 2025 report by the Afriacn Development Bank which revealed national electricity access at 32.7%, with 25% connected to the grid and 7.7% off-grid.
Meanwhile, we searched the website of the LEC for data on the population’s access to electricity. At the bottom of the home page of the website, there is a section that shows statistics. The data show that about 1,003,508 Liberians have access to electricity.
We calculated this number to find the percentage of the 5.2 million population as recorded by the Liberia Institute of Statistics and Geoinformation Service (LISGIS). The percentage is 19.29% — which is the total percentage of the population that is connected to the LEC grid.
Conclusion
Based on these findings, we conclude that the claim made by Liberia Electricity Corporation Managing Director Mohammed Sheriff that electricity access increased from about 32% to 38% nationwide is mostly correct.
The World Bank and African Development Bank data confirmed that Liberia’s electricity access rate was about 32.7% at the end of 2024, while approximately 376,000 additional people or 7% of the population gained electricity access in 2025 through donor-supported expansion projects.
Editor’s Note: This story is produced as part of the Liberia Media Empowerment Project (LMEP) implemented by Internews with funding from the European Union. The funder or partner had no say in the production of this fact-check report.
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