To say Amar Inamdar has a vision is an understatement. The soft-spoken, steely-eyed Inamdar wants to see everyone in Africa get electricity, and runs a $100m fund to do just that. But not Eskom, coal-fired conventional energy.

Through his KawiSafi Ventures, he is trying to bring solar energy to East Africa and his quiet confidence shows he’s already making progress. “There is a revolution happening in the villages or towns around us,” he told the TEDGlobal audience in Tanzania last month. “It is an echo of the cellphone revolution and is also wireless. Now it is solar. There’s something remarkable happening ”

But the problem is the old ways of thinking about getting energy are rooted in unsustainable business models, which can never scale to reach the demands of a power-hungry Africa.