William Kamkwamba’s great achievements
Posted by: isiria, in A BETTER WORLD, SUSTAINABLE LIVING, people
William Kamkwamba, now a 19-year-old Malawi high school student, constructed without formal education or training a windmill that could generate enough energy to generate power for his parents’ house and charge car batteries or mobile phones for people in his village - a feat that certainly changed his life forever. The windmill mentioned is his second version (a first smaller one originally only ran a light in his room). Both constructions are remarkable not just because they are totally based on William’s own design - he achieved their engineering and construction without any formal education and qualification: he had dropped out of school at 14 as his family was unable to pay the school fees.
All he had was his intelligence, a book on electricity that had been donated to his primary school’s library, some plastic piping, some local materials, and an investment of about 16 dollars. Based on much trial and error, essential ingredients of learning, William constructed the 12-meter tall windmill (the original one was only 5 meters high) that saved his family from using expensive, smoke producing smoke and eye irritating paraffin candles. The mill is made out of scrap timber with steel blades (the original ones were made from PVC); they are powering a bicycle dynamo, which in turn provides electricity to a battery. William and his family now use the energy generated by the wind to light up their house, which even works on wind-free days thanks to the engineering youth’s use of a car battery being hooked up to his generator as a backup.
Blogs carrying William’s inspiring story (which originally was published by Malawi’s Daily Times newspaper) led not just to funds for his education but also to a speaking engagement at the 2007 TEDGlobal conference last month in Arusha, Tanzania. After William’s story spread, he was contacted by Emeka Okafor, the recent curator of the 2007 TED Global Conference in Arusha; Okafor invited William to speak at the conference as one of the 100 prestigious presenters; his three-minute presentation about his windmills won him a standing ovation from delegates. (TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design - three broad subject areas that are seen collectively as shaping our future. Each year, TED invites some of the world’s leading thinkers and doers to gather in Monterey, California to allows attendees and speakers from vastly different fields to ‘cross-fertilize’ and draw inspiration from unlikely places. In addition, bi-annual TEDGlobal conferences are being held; this year’s took place in Africa after TEDGlobal 2005 convened a gathering in Oxford, England).
Back to William Kamkwamba though: TEDGlobal also presented him with his first-ever opportunity to see the internet; within hours he began googling for “windmill” and “solar energy” and was impressed with the speed at which he could achieve things using the net, amazed about the number of hits were returned for each search as well as excited about the depth of content available.
Upon return to Malawi, William applied his new knowledge about wind-powered electricity to a redesign of his second windmill, a process he detailed on his blog William Kamkwamba’s Malawi Windmill, which offers step-by-step construction instructions. The blog has since attracted enormous global interest, with a Google search for Kamkwamba’s name generating right now more than 81.000 results. By the way: Tom Rielly, director of partnerships at TED and Kamkwamba’s mentor, travelled to Malawi with him after the TEDGlobal conference and helped to establish the blog, typing while Kamkwamba dictated the content in his limited English. With help from friends, William also set up an email address and an account on Flickr. And what would all that cyberactivity be without a computer? It was donated by conference sponsors in the US. All that support shows: people like good-news stories! 
What I personally find remarkable is not just the story from windmill to TED and back to windmill, but also William’s attitude and positive energy. Soyapi Mumba, a fellow African blogger and new friend of Kamkwamba described his first impression of him: “What I like about William is that he didn’t join the multitude of people just blaming government or policy makers for his lack of education. Neither did he point fingers at statutory corporations for the lack of electricity in his home. He didn’t just sit down and blame his parents for all this, either.” And according to Sydney Morning Herald, Andrew Heavens, a journalist based in Khartoum, Sudan, says Kamkwamba belongs to the “cheetah” generation of Africans who are not going to wait for government and aid organisations to do things for them.
“My future plan is that I’m going to learn to research using the internet,” William said. “Then I plan to build a water pump powered by my windmill so we can have water from the well in our house and irrigate our fields. Then, I don’t know.” The first steps towards pumping water can already be tracked on his blog, but William hasn’t stopped there either: after his recent modifications to his own windmill and he has completed a second installation at his primary school.
Truly a remarkable and inspiring story. If you are feeling as moved as we are over William’s accomplishments, you can donate directly to help William’s education and engineering projects.
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