Most power utilities in West Africa are not financially sustainable. Several interrelated factors cause these performance issues, but dependence on liquid fuels, poor governance, insufficient use of information technology (IT), and weak balance sheets are particularly common and acute challenges. This paper is one of a series of three that aim to help West African utilities and governments - and the development financiers that support them - better understand and respond to these issues. The focus in the papers is primarily on utilities with a distribution function (that is, distribution-only utilities, transmission and distribution utilities, or vertically integrated utilities), but examples from other types of utilities (transmission only, generation and transmission) are drawn on when instructive. Though each paper's approach is tailored to its topic, they share common features. Each paper contains: (i) a stocktaking of the scope of the challenge in West African utilities, sometimes informed by new data collected for that paper
(ii) conceptual frameworks to help readers deepen their understanding of the topic
and (iii) real-world country examples in the form of case studies and or utility deep dives. The insights presented in these papers draw on lessons learned from past World Bank engagement with client utilities and, in turn, have helped shape ongoing Bank operations.