- William Kamkwamba
William Kamkwamba (born 1987) is a
Malawi an secondary student and inventor. He gained fame in his country when, in 2001, he self-built a windmill to power his a few electrical appliances in his family's house inMasitala , a hamlet inKasungu District , Central Region; he built this windmills using such components as blue-gum trees and bicycle parts. Since then, he has built two other windmills in his village, and the tallest stands at 39 feet, and has planned to build two others, including one that will stand inLilongwe .Kamkwamba is self-taught, and learned how to build windmills after having looked at a photograph of one in a library book. He started to build windmills after he left school because he couldn't pay the USD $80 tuition.
International notoriety
When the Daily Times newspaper in
Blantyre wrote a story on Kamkwamba's windmills inNovember 2006 , the story circulated through the blogosphere [ [http://www.vdomck.org/2006/11/23/malawian-windmill/ Hacktivate - "Malawian windmill"] ] , and TED conference directorEmeka Okafor invited Kamkwamba to speak at TEDGlobal 2007 inArusha ,Tanzania as a guest [ [http://www.ted.com/speakers/view/id/135 TED | Speakers | William Kamkwamba] ] . His speech moved the audience, and several venture capitalists at the conference pledged to help finance his secondary education. His story was covered bySarah Childress for theWall Street Journal [ [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119742696302722641.html?mod=hpp_us_editors_picks "A Young Tinkerer Builds a Windmill, Electrifying a Nation"] , bySarah Childress ,Wall Street Journal ,December 12 ,2007 ] . He is now a student atAfrican Bible College Christian Academy in Lilongwe.References
External links
* [http://williamkamkwamba.typepad.com/ Blog]
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