Increasing the current low level of access to electricity in developing countries is important for economic development and poverty eradication. Encouraging the involvement of new actors for implementation of rural electrification projects is a relatively new policy. At the same time, it is required that the projects contribute to sustainable development. It is therefore of interest to investigate whether, for instance, private sector involvement can contribute more to some aspects of sustainability than the conventional approach where rural electrification is the responsibility of a government utility. It seems that so far no studies have addressed this issue. This paper presents findings from field trips to seven rural electrification areas in Eastern and Southern Africa and shows how these studies can be used to illustrate different dimensions of sustainability by means of indicators. The field studies generated valuable experiences regarding collection of data for evaluation of the indicators and illustrate some difficulties associated with comparing the different aspects of sustainability. The evaluation indicates that the national utilities perform better from a social/ethical perspective, whereas the private organisations and the community-based organisations manage their client-relation issues in a more sustainable way. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.