William Kamkwamba: Inspired to Action, Electrifying a Nation
William Kamkwamba is a Malawian inventor, author and secondary school student at African Leadership Academy.
TED curator Chris Anderson speaks with William Kamkwamba.
He gained instant fame in 2001, when he self-built a
windmill to supply power to his family's house in Malawi. Kamkwamba, at age 14 built a windmill from locally sourced components, mainly blue-gum trees and
bicycle parts.
He started to build windmills after he dropped out of
school because he couldn't raise tuition.He has plans to build more windmills, including one that will stand in
Lilongwe.
Self-taught, Mr. Kamkwamba learned how to build windmills
from photographs. He borrowed a 5th grade American textbook from a local
library called Using Energy, which depicted a wind turbine on its cover. He
decided to build a windmill to power his family’s home and stop using kerosene,
which provided only smoky, flickering, distant and expensive light after dark.
In June 2007, Mr. Kamkwamba was onstage at a Technology
Entertainment Design (TED) conference in Arusha, Tanzania. "I got
information about a windmill, and I try and I made it," he said during the
meeting to a big ovation. After the conference, a group of entrepreneurs,
bloggers and venture capitalists pledged to finance his education.
Since the TED meeting, he has given speeches at the World
Economic Forum Africa meeting in Cape Town, June 2008 where he was a keynote
speaker at the AMD-sponsored technology pre-conference; International CES
meeting in January 2009; the grand opening of the African Leadership Academy in
February 2009; the Africa Economic Forum at Columbia University in March 2009;
the Aspen Ideas Festival in July 2009; and TEDGlobal 2009, in July 2009.
Kamkwamba is the subject of a documentary short film, Moving
Windmills, produced by Tom Rielly and directed and edited by Ari Kushnir and
Scott Thrift. The film won the North American Filmmaker’s Award from
Participant Productions, producers of An Inconvenient Truth, Good Night and
Good Luck and Charlie Wilson’s War.
He has been profiled on the front page of The Wall Street
Journal December 8, 2007, and received major international coverage in The
Malawi Daily Times, The Sydney Morning Herald, La Repubblica, and several blog
posts.
He is currently finishing his autobiography titled, “The Boy
Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope”, with
co-author Bryan Mealer. The book will be published worldwide on September 29, 2009.
Former Vice President and Nobel Laureate, Al Gore's quote on the book, "THE BOY WHO HARNESSED THE WIND is the inspiring story of a young man in Africa who used the only resources available to him to build a windmill and elevate the lives and spirits of those in his community. William Kamkwamba's achievements with wind energy should serve as a model of what one person, with an inspired idea, can do to tackle the crisis we face. His book tells a moving and exciting story."
