





Photo of William Kamkwamba's wind turbine by

Tom Reilly. licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0

Generic license.

William Kamkwamba grew up in a village in Malawi, in southeast

Africa. He could not attend school because his parents couldn't afford

the tuition of $(removed) per year. From time to time, he sneaked into

classes to learn math and English, but it wasn't long until the

teachers discovered his presence and kicked him out.

Undaunted by poverty or the famines that affected his country,

William taught himself by studying the books in the library of an

elementary school in his village. In 2002, when he was 14 years old,

he went to the library to find out what the English word "grapes"

meant and he stumbled across a science book for elementary school

students called Using Energy. William says that finding this

book was the trigger that changed the course of his life.

He had a difficult time reading the book, but he pored over

its diagrams for motors and generators, and eventually came up with

the idea of building an electricity-generating wind turbine. His

village did not have electricity (in fact, only 2% of Malawi receives

electricity service, and that service is very spotty), and he dreamed

of being able to read at night in his house.

William went about collecting the parts for a wind turbine from

trash heaps and junkyards. He used old plastic pipes, a broken

bicycle, a tractor fan, sticks, and bits of wire. He soldered the

electrical components together using a piece of wire heated in a fire,

and used a bent bicycle spoke as a wrench adapter.

William lashed his generator to a 16-foot tower made from tree

branches. His fellow villagers thought his efforts were foolish, and

they teased him. But when the blades of the turbine began to spin, and

the small light bulb that he had connected to the output wires began

to glow brightly, they stopped scoffing. William soon installed four

light bulbs and two radios in his house, and built a circuit breaker

to keep his house's thatch roof from catching fire.

As William continued to refine his home power system, he was

discovered by journalists visiting the village. The news whipped

around Africa and through the rest of the world, and he became known

as "the boy who you harnessed the wind." He went on an international

speaking tour, and at the age of 19 enrolled in a university in South

Africa.

Today, the lasting impact of Williams work can already be felt. He

is committed to improving the lives of his fellow Africans through the

innovative use of sustainable technology, and is leading a project to

rebuild his primary school

in Malawi. You can read about it here.

Watch a short

documentary about William Kamkwamba.

Buy The

Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer

on Amazon

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