Nigeria has once again ranked as the country with the largest electricity access deficit globally, with 86.8 million Nigerians lacking electricity in 2023, according to the World Bank’s 2025 Energy Progress Report released this week.

This marks the third consecutive year the country has held that position, underscoring the persistent energy poverty in Africa’s largest economy despite repeated promises and reforms by successive administrations.

The findings directly contradict claims by the Nigerian government, particularly a statement by the Minister of Power, Adebayo Adelabu, in April 2025, who insisted that “about 150 million Nigerians currently enjoy electricity supply.” The World Bank data not only disputes that figure but also shows that access has declined.

According to the report, only 61% of Nigeria’s population had access to electricity in 2023, a less than one percent increase to 60.5% in 2022, and less than the figure cited by the minister. With Nigeria’s estimated population of about 223 million in 2023, this means roughly 86.8 million people remained without electricity, above any official government admission.

The World Bank report, titled “Tracking SDG7: The Energy Progress Report 2025,” is a collaborative publication by the World Bank, the International Energy Agency (IEA), and other UN agencies. It tracks global progress on Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG7), which aims to ensure universal access to affordable, reliable, and modern energy by 2030.

It highlights a troubling reversal in Nigeria’s energy access trajectory. Rather than improving, access to electricity has stagnated or declined, and analysts say population growth is outpacing new connections.

“In 2023, 18 of the 20 countries with the largest electricity access deficits were in Sub-Saharan Africa. Once again, Nigeria (86.8 million), the Democratic Republic of Congo (79.6 million), and Ethiopia (56.4 million) topped the list,” the report said.

Population Growth Worsening the Gap

While 35 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa reportedly gained access to electricity in 2023, the region’s population also grew by about 30 million, resulting in a net improvement of just 5 million people. In Nigeria’s case, the situation is more concerning, as the number of those without access to electricity has recorded a small increase compared to the previous year.

The World Bank warned that Sub-Saharan Africa now accounts for 85% of the global population without electricity, a jump from 50% in 2010, with Nigeria alone contributing more than 15% of that global shortfall.

Clean Cooking and Energy Poverty

The energy poverty crisis extends beyond electricity. The report notes that in 2023, only 26% of Nigerians had access to clean cooking energy, meaning the vast majority still rely on firewood, charcoal, and other harmful fuels for cooking—fuels linked to serious health and environmental issues.

“The lowest national access rates were observed in South Sudan (5%), followed by Chad and Burundi (12%). These countries, along with Nigeria, have shown low annualized increases in access since 2010,” the report said.

A Bleak Outlook Unless Urgent Action Is Taken

While some regions of the world are on track to achieve universal access by 2030, Nigeria is among those moving in the opposite direction. The report praises progress in Central and Southern Asia, which slashed their electricity access deficit from 414 million in 2010 to just 27 million in 2023. In contrast, Nigeria and other African nations are still far behind, despite billions of dollars in donor funding and public investments.

“The pace of progress in Sub-Saharan Africa calls for significant acceleration,” the report concluded, adding that under current policies, Nigeria will miss the SDG7 target by a wide margin.

As it stands, the 2025 World Bank report is a damning indictment of Nigeria’s energy policies and a warning that without urgent, transparent, and results-driven interventions, tens of millions of Nigerians will remain in the dark for years to come.

Meta scored a significant legal victory on Wednesday after a federal judge ruled that its use of copyrighted books to train AI systems falls under the fair use doctrine, delivering a second major win for AI developers in less than 48 hours.

The ruling comes on the heels of a similar decision in favor of Anthropic on Monday, and together, the two judgments are shaping what could become a foundational legal precedent for how U.S. copyright law applies to artificial intelligence training.

In both cases, federal judges emphasized that the use of copyrighted material to train large language models (LLMs) was transformative, allowing the AI systems to generate new, original content without directly reproducing or commercially displacing the authors’ works. These rulings are now being viewed as pivotal moments in the ongoing legal battle between content creators and tech firms racing to dominate the AI space.

Meta Case: Authors Lost on Arguments and Evidence

In the lawsuit against Meta, 13 authors, including comedian Sarah Silverman, alleged that the company had illegally used their books to train its AI models. But U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria dismissed their claims on summary judgment, stating that the authors failed to make the right legal arguments or provide sufficient evidence.

“The plaintiffs presented no meaningful evidence on market dilution at all,” Chhabria wrote. He added that Meta’s use of the books was transformative because the AI systems did not reproduce the authors’ styles or core creative elements, nor did they undermine the commercial value of the books in the marketplace.

Importantly, Judge Chhabria emphasized that his ruling should not be seen as a blanket endorsement of all AI training practices.

“This does not mean that Meta’s use of copyrighted materials is lawful in every case,” he said, leaving the door open for future legal challenges where plaintiffs provide better-developed evidence on how AI models may harm content markets.

Anthropic Ruling: AI Learning Like a Human

Just two days earlier, Judge William Alsup of the Northern District of California issued a similarly detailed ruling in favor of Anthropic, the Amazon-backed AI company behind the Claude chatbot. Alsup held that the company’s use of copyrighted books to train Claude was “quintessentially transformative” and akin to how human writers read books to develop their own style and ideas.

“The purpose and character of using copyrighted works to train LLMs to generate new text was quintessentially transformative,” Alsup wrote. “Like any reader aspiring to be a writer.”

While Alsup acknowledged that Anthropic had once used pirated digital copies of books as part of a larger corpus—referred to as a “central library”—he determined that training Claude itself was fair use. However, he ordered a trial to determine if damages should be awarded for Anthropic’s initial unauthorized copying of the books, especially in cases where pirated versions were downloaded and later replaced with purchased copies.

Alsup’s nuanced approach signaled that fair use may protect the training process, but not necessarily the means through which the materials were obtained.

Wider Legal Implications for AI and Copyright

These two rulings, though limited in scope, represent early but important legal benchmarks in what is expected to be a long and complex judicial reckoning over AI training practices. Courts are increasingly being asked to balance the rights of creators with the innovation imperatives of AI developers.

The outcomes are particularly relevant as other high-profile lawsuits loom. The New York Times is currently suing OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging that their AI models used the newspaper’s articles without permission. Similarly, Disney, Universal, and other media companies have filed suits over the unauthorized use of TV shows and films to train generative models like Midjourney and Stability AI.

In his opinion, Judge Chhabria explicitly noted that future rulings may differ depending on the type of content involved.

“Markets for certain types of works (like news articles) might be even more vulnerable to indirect competition from AI outputs,” he wrote, hinting that the outcome in the Times case could swing differently.

Tech Industry Applauds, But Debate Far From Over

Anthropic and Meta both welcomed the rulings. A spokesperson for Anthropic said the decision “is consistent with copyright’s purpose in enabling creativity and fostering scientific progress.” Meta did not comment, but legal analysts say the back-to-back wins bolster the tech industry’s stance that training AI models on publicly available content can be legally permissible under U.S. law—at least when framed properly.

However, despite the momentum, legal experts and industry observers caution that these decisions are far from the final word. Fair use, by its nature, is a context-specific legal doctrine. Future lawsuits that better demonstrate market harm, unauthorized copying, or direct commercial substitution may well produce different outcomes.