We in the West get easily excited with novelties like Apple Pay or Tesla Energy. But for people familiar with innovations coming from developing world this is old news. For example Kenya is some good eight years ahead of the “developed” world in mobile payments and two years in solar powered off-grid technology.

Kenyan companies, like M-Kopa Solar, are actually selling complete solar off-grid systems with a pay-as-you-go model via mobile banking. A solar panel and battery is leased together with led lights, chargers and radio as a bonus to rural poor with quite a success and for less than 10€ a month. Not $3500 per battery as Tesla plans to do. Now, you cannot power a washing machine through this. It gives you enough power just to charge your mobile phone and light up your house. But again, 5 billion people don’t own washing machines on this planet. So a trillion dollar idea, in my opinion, is not just some anti-aging pill for the rich, but some revolutionary and ecological battery/washing machine for the poor.

Mobile banking in Kenya gave birth to many other innovations that are based on this robust and unique infrastructure. The M-Pesa payments service was launched by Safaricom in 2007 and today is used by majority of population on a daily basis. The ecosystem of mobile phones and small kiosk vendors virtually replaced the banking sector. One of the reasons — banking barely existed for most Kenyans before the m-banking revolution. We in the “developed world” in fact might never catch up and get rid of the embossed plastic (credit cards). The same worry goes for the Tesla Energy and electric cars. There is just too much money and lobbing power behind the old suboptimal and eco-unfriendly infrastructure.

Land lines were scarce in Kenya where now 96% of people browse online via mobile phones. You can buy a “dumb phone” for 5€ or an (almost) smart phone for some 30€ and start tweeting. But even with the cheapest phone, you are able not just to order merchandise, but to actually pay for it or insure your crops. Apple Pay and other incumbents will never achieve this level of penetration, because the whole app-based approach is doomed to fail. M-Pesa uses the only app that is available on any mobile phone — text messaging. Even the most successful app for smart phones will reach only 1% market penetration in rich places like Germany.

Elon Musk actually comes from Africa, he is South African, and so both Tesla Energy and M-Kopa ideas come technically form the same continent. But tech entrepreneurs from the rich world would benefit from a more humble attitude. In the same fashion as the Indian state of Kerala can have better life expectancy than Washington DC, despite being more than fifty times poorer in terms of GDP per capita, Kenya can be now almost a decade ahead of the West in mobile payments. And in some years will be a decade ahead in off-grid battery and solar technology.

So my small advice to Tesla would be to crack the developing countries’ markets with a crazy sounding idea of solar powered and eco-friendly washing machine-slash-battery. It would need to use a bit of water. I don’t think you can persuade most people that you can wash properly without water. Hans Rosling explains why washing machine is crucial aspiration for 5 billion people who don’t currently own it. They also don’t own fridges. But there are already some low cost innovations coming from India in this area.

I really wish Tesla can succeed in the rich world markets with their two newly launched battery products that have a huge transformative potential. But if they want to catch up with the innovative companies from developing world they need to change pricing and business model.