Sub-Saharan Africa experiences persistently high electricity losses that constrain electricity service delivery and sector performance. This paper examines whether these losses reflect structural constraints or avoidable operational inefficiencies using panel data from 44 countries (2000–2021). We combine double-bootstrap Data Envelopment Analysis, minimum-loss frontier decomposition, and a Fractional Response Model with endogeneity diagnostics. Avoidable losses average 14.7 percentage points, representing 45% of observed losses. Countries operate at 60% of their technical frontier and 54% of their minimum-loss frontier. Higher avoidable losses are systematically associated with lower technical efficiency, highlighting the importance of operational improvements alongside infrastructure expansion.