On access to electricity and higher education in SA

A beautiful graph from GapMinder showing the relationship between access to electricity and higher education for South African municipalities.

A few observations:

- Access to electricity increases markedly over this time period

- The percentage of with higher education increases up to 2000, and started decreasing since then, but with some notable exceptions

- The curve is pulled back towards the left-hand corner as time progresses; improved access to electricity without corresponding gains in higher education.

- A notable rebound effect from 2001 onwards - access to electricity still improved in most cases, but percentage of population with higher education starts to fall behind

This signals pressure on higher education, especially from 2001 onwards, that is not directly related to the lack of access to electricity. This failure is not uniform throughout the country though.