This TED Talk features entrepreneurial business leader Amar in Amdar, recorded live at TED Global 2017.

There's something really incredible happening.

So there's over a billion people who have no access to energy whatsoever across the world.

620 million of them here in Africa.

It costs about $1,500 to connect each household up to the grid.

If you're going to wait for it, it takes about nine years on average.

I mean, that feels like a lifetime when you're trying to make that happen.

That's kind of unbelievable, and it's also unacceptable.

So let's do something about it.

The light bulb comes from this idea that you have an energy system

that's made up of the ideas of Tesla

and the ideas of Thomas Edison.

There was an evolution that said,

it's not just about the light bulb,

it's about the whole system,

the whole energy system that goes about light bulb. And what happened in that gilded age was the creation

of an industrial system that every country around the world has now started to emulate. So to get

to the appliances, you need to have power stations, from power stations, you need to have

infrastructure, and that infrastructure then takes you to the point of having electricity,

and you get to the light bulbs and the appliances that we all take for granted.

But the amazing thing in a way is that there's a revolution happening

in the villages and towns all around us here in East Africa.

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