These include improved school enrolment rates (particularly for girls, as the burden on girls of collecting fuel wood is reduced), access to information and communication technologies (telephony, Internet), and an increased ability of rural communities to retain doctors, teachers and other professionals as it improves living standards. Moreover, there are positive linkages between electrification and accelerated economic growth and employment generation, economic diversification and industrialization. While the first makes a direct contribution to better living standards and has several social dividends, only the second allows the fully-fledged economic and social transformations required to generate development spirals (figure 1).