Impact of Rural Electrification on Women’s Empowerment in Kebbi State, North West Nigeria: An Empirical Study

Rural electrification programmes have been theorised as catalysts for women's empowerment through their effects on household energy burdens, productive time use, business opportunities, and access to information, yet rigorous empirical evidence from Nigeria's North West geopolitical zone using robust causal inference methods remains limited. This study empirically examines the impact of rural electrification on dimensions of women's empowerment in Kebbi State, applying a quasi-experimental difference-in-differences design to compare outcomes between electrified and non-electrified communities before and after programme implementation. Household survey data were collected from 480 women across 24 communities, including 12 that received solar mini-grid electrification between 2021 and 2023 and 12 matched control communities. Outcome measures include hours spent on productive activities, enterprise income, mobile phone and media access, self-reported decision-making autonomy, and children's school attendance. Propensity score matching is applied to ensure comparability between treatment and control groups on observable pre-treatment characteristics. Results indicate statistically significant positive effects of electrification on women's productive work hours (increase of 1.8 hours per day), enterprise income (mean increase of 22,400 naira per month), and daughters' school attendance rates (increase of 14 percentage points). Decision-making autonomy shows a positive but smaller and statistically insignificant improvement. The study recommends gender-responsive programme design that explicitly supports women's enterprise development alongside electrification. Keywords: rural electrification, women's empowerment, Kebbi State, difference-in-differences, gender and energy.