DEV Community: Ben Portman

What the World Bank’s electricity-access indicator actually measures

Ben Portman — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 11:52:24 +0000

The World Bank’s latest available regional series shows electricity access rising—but the global average hides very different starting points.

Region	2000	2024
World	78.22%	91.93%
Sub-Saharan Africa	25.71%	55.11%
South Asia	56.77%	99.82%
Middle East & North Africa*	81.37%	96.46%

These are annual observations from World Development Indicators indicator EG.ELC.ACCS.ZS. The word “access” matters: this measure does not tell us whether electricity is affordable, reliable, or available around the clock. A high access rate is useful context, but it is not a complete measure of energy poverty or power quality.

*The World Bank’s regional aggregate for Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan and Pakistan, excluding high-income economies.

Explore the interactive 2000–2024 chart · Read the World Bank indicator definition and source data

I build Global Data Tracker, a free explorer for comparing country statistics and their reporting years: https://globaldatatracker.com/. I’m interested in feedback on how to make data vintage and measurement limits clearer.

“Latest” Isn’t Live: A Practical Way to Label Annual Country Data

Ben Portman — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 21:08:42 +0000

A dashboard can refresh every few seconds while the underlying statistic changes only once a year. Those are two different clocks, and mixing them can make a published estimate look like a live measurement.

For a simple World Bank Open Data API example, request one indicator for one year:

https://api.worldbank.org/v2/country/all/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN?date=2023&format=json&per_page=400

The response contains metadata and then the observation rows. Keep the observation year with the value, preserve missing values as missing, and join separate indicators on country code and year. When comparing countries, remove regional and income-group aggregates unless the analysis explicitly needs them. The World Bank publishes the WDI API documentation and sources and methods.

I find it useful to keep three timestamps separate:

Observation period: the year the value describes.
Publication or revision date: when the source released or revised that value, when available.
Retrieval time: when an app fetched the record.

A page can update its retrieval timestamp and animate a clearly labelled estimate without claiming that the annual source value itself is moving in real time. For example, a population counter can project from an annual baseline and an explicitly stated rate; it remains a model, not a stream of registered births and deaths.

The same care applies to cross-country charts. A positive association between income and life expectancy is descriptive; it does not show that income alone caused the difference. Coverage, reporting years, definitions, missingness, and aggregation all matter.

I’m applying these labels and caveats in Global Data Tracker, a free country-statistics explorer. What source detail do you check first when a chart says “latest”?

The world is 57.8% urban. Country paths vary a lot.

Ben Portman — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 17:16:27 +0000

A single global average can hide very different country stories.

The World Bank's urban-population series puts the world at 57.83% urban in 2025, up from 34.23% in 1960—a change of 23.60 percentage points. The same measure moves at very different speeds across countries.

Country or area	1960	2025	Change
World	34.23%	57.83%	+23.60 pp
Brazil	44.68%	88.18%	+43.50 pp
China	19.75%	66.34%	+46.59 pp
India	17.93%	35.69%	+17.76 pp
Canada	69.04%	82.88%	+13.84 pp
Bangladesh	5.11%	33.24%	+28.13 pp
Kenya	8.23%	32.21%	+23.98 pp
Egypt	37.83%	42.90%	+5.07 pp

The headline is not simply that every place became more urban. Brazil and China started from different baselines but each gained more than 40 percentage points in this series. Canada started much higher and changed less. Egypt's reported share moved by about five points. Those comparisons make the global line more interesting, while still leaving plenty to investigate country by country.

A few cautions matter:

These values are urban population as a share of total population, not the number of people living in cities.
A percentage-point change is the direct subtraction between the two shares. It is not the same as percentage growth.
Urban definitions and reporting practices can differ across countries, so the figures are useful for broad comparison but are not a perfect like-for-like measure of what counts as a city.
The World Bank series is published historical data, not a live sensor. Recent years may be revised as estimates and national reporting are updated.

Source: World Bank: Urban population (% of total population). The World Bank API exposes the year-by-year series. Values above are rounded to two decimal places.

I built GlobalDataTracker.com to make country indicators easier to explore across places and years. You can compare this series with population, health, economy, environment, and other measures on the globe.

What country would you compare next—and which indicator gives you the most surprising long-run change?

Internet access rose across six countries, at different speeds

Ben Portman — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 16:33:44 +0000

A ranking is a snapshot. A time series shows how quickly access broadened.

I pulled the World Bank’s internet-use indicator for six countries from 2000 through 2024 and plotted the share of each population using the internet.

The six-country selection is illustrative, not a representative sample of the world.

What stands out

By 2024, internet use was reported at 94.7% in the United States, 94.4% in Canada, 93.5% in Germany, 92.0% in China, 84.5% in Brazil, and 64.9% in India.

All six series rose, but they did not follow the same path. India started from a much lower baseline and its steepest gains came later. Brazil’s adoption also accelerated over time. The three highest lines converged near the mid-90s by the end of this snapshot.

That is a description of the series, not an explanation of why the changes happened. Internet-use rates alone do not tell us about connection quality, affordability, hours online, or differences between urban and rural areas.

Open the interactive chart to compare the annual values.

Reproduce the series

The chart uses World Development Indicators series IT.NET.USER.ZS, “Individuals using the Internet (% of population).” The API query below returns the annual observations for the same countries and period:

import requests

url = (
    "https://api.worldbank.org/v2/country/"
    "BRA;CAN;CHN;DEU;IND;USA/indicator/IT.NET.USER.ZS"
)
response = requests.get(
    url,
    params={"date": "2000:2024", "format": "json", "per_page": 2000},
    timeout=30,
)
response.raise_for_status()

metadata, observations = response.json()
rows = [
    {
        "country": row["country"]["value"],
        "year": int(row["date"]),
        "internet_use_pct": row["value"],
    }
    for row in observations
    if row["value"] is not None
]
print(rows[:3])

The World Bank’s indicator page explains the series. I also saved a dated, reproducible 150-row CSV snapshot with the source metadata; it includes GDP per person for the same six countries and years.

A note on timing

This is a static extract downloaded on 24 September 2026, and the latest year available in it is 2024. World Bank values can be revised as source data are updated. They are annual published statistics, not a live count of people coming online.

If you want to explore other countries, years, or indicators, GlobalDataTracker.com puts the source-linked country series in an interactive explorer.