Addressing Energy Poverty in Sub‐Saharan Africa: The Distributional Effects of Inflation and Energy Market Structure in Achieving Sustainable Development

ABSTRACT This study investigates the distributional effects of inflation and energy market structure on energy poverty in sub‐Saharan Africa (SSA). Anchored on the extended utility‐maximization framework, which highlights how inflation erodes real income value, we analyzed how inflationary pressures and structural inefficiencies in the energy market constrain the progress of SDG‐7 (access to electricity and access to clean fuels and cooking technologies). We used unbalanced panel data of 22 countries from 2000 to 2022, employing the method of moments quantile regression for baseline estimation to analyze heterogeneous effects across different distributions of energy poverty, with Driscoll–Kraay standard errors for robustness check. We found that domestic inflation significantly exacerbates energy poverty, especially at the lower quantiles, suggesting that the energy‐poorest are most vulnerable to inflation. Similarly, energy import dependency and transmission and distribution losses show consistent strong negative effects, with the impact of transmission and distribution losses intensifying at higher quantiles of accessibility, reflecting the structural fragility of the energy market. The robustness of these findings is validated, making the study contribute to the literature by integrating inflation dynamics and market structures into energy poverty discourse while offering robust policy implications for achieving SDG‐7. The findings emphasize that the government's macroeconomic stability objective should not just be for economic growth but also as a prerequisite for ensuring universal energy access. Additionally, it advocates for policy shifts from merely expanding energy generation capacity to investing in advanced technologies and high‐quality infrastructure to ensure efficiency in transmission and distribution networks.