Nairobi, June 11 -- Maybe you have wondered if you will ever meet someone from Olenguruone, way out on the edge of the Mau Forest. Maybe you haven't. Maybe you know it only as the name of a road connecting Nairobi's Kileleshwa and Lavington. Then you meet Carol Koech, the vice president for Africa at the Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet.

She grew up there.

"I watched the forest recede," she recalls.

She also watched cabbages planted in acres rot for lack of a market. Milk spoiled because there was no cold storage. Hard work went unrewarded because one crucial link was missing. She calls it energy poverty.

Decades later, Koech found herself in Lagos, Nigeria on an assignment for General Electric, helping Nigeria build power...