Wednesday, September 30, 2009

A modern day Edison - William Kamkwamba


As I read the story of William Kamkwamba, I was floored. A self-taught Malawian boy, read books from a library and used scrap parts from a junkyard to build windmills and bring life-changing electricity to his remote village. In the video he narrates that he could not go to school and had to drop out because his family could not afford the $80 tuition. Instead, he found a library and read books about windmills. All the books only taught him how to use a windmill. No book that he had taught him the basic principles of generating electricity from the wind power. He pursued to learn all the techniques of how to convert that wind energy into electricity and eventually built a windmill that generated electricity for his home.


This is an inspiration to entrepreneurs and kids. It is not that a 14 year old kid can't put together a windmill. The issue here is that he built it from scratch and prevailed despite the conditions and availability of material in his remote Malawian village. If you see the video, you will understand what I mean.

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