Development Talk

To be truly inspired visit William’s blog at http://williamkamkwamba.typepad.com/

William Kamkwamba is a 19-year-old high school student whose first experience of the internet was at a TEDGlobal conference held recently in Arusha, Tanzania (www.ted.com). William was invited to this conference after the Kenyan media (Malawi’s Daily Times newspaper) gave coverage to William’s amazing efforts to generate electricity for his parents’ farm by building a windmill of his own design.

This young enterprising student is using the power of internet technology, specifically searching for information and blogging, to increase his knowledge of building windmills, to raise funding for his schooling and improve the circumstances of his community. He lives about 2 1/2 hours north of the capital city of Lilongwe in Malawi amd is interested in wind and solar energy, irrigation pumps and anything mechanical or electrical.

On the 9th of July the Sydney Morning Herald featured an article on William and his passion for windmills and chaging communities circumstances through his inspirational ideas which he is sharing on his blog to raise funds and support. As detailed by the Syndey Morning Herald “The windmill is remarkable because Kamkwamba left school at 14 as his family was unable to pay the school fees. Armed only with his intelligence, a book on electricity, some plastic piping and found objects, Kamkwamba built his first windmill, which generated enough power to run a light in his room.”

“His second, larger windmill uses a bicycle to increase efficiency and was able to generate power for his parents’ house and charge car batteries or mobile phones for people in his village.”

“As news of Kamkwamba’s achievements spread, he was invited to the second biannual TEDGlobal conference, where his three-minute presentation about the windmill won him a standing ovation from delegates.”

“While at the conference, the young Malawian saw the internet for the first time and within hours began Google-searching for “windmill” and “solar energy” and was amazed with how many hits were returned for each search.”

“Kamkwamba was particularly impressed with the speed at which he could achieve things using the internet. “I was very excited when I saw the internet for the first time,” he said. “The internet makes transfer of information very instant.“”

William used his newfound knowledge that he had gained on the internet about wind-powered electricity to redesign his second windmill. Visit his blog for a step-by-step account and photos of the construction process. This makes for fascinating and inspirational reading.

Some statistics offered by William for his blog:-

“We starting blogging in earnest June 18, and now it’s Sunday July 15 2007, about one month later. So far the blog has received 113,047 page views, including 64,851 views on July 5, 2007 alone, the day the site hit BoingBoing.net, Digg, Reddit, and Metafilter. There were about 100 entries in the Google Index for my project on June 6, 2007, and now there are 69,000 to 75,000, depending on when you search. There are 131,000 entries in Yahoo, 5,589 in MSN and 715 in Ask.com. Technorati lists 231 posts and a rank of 65,238 and an Authority level of 87. Bloglines lists 517 posts.

“William shares with us his vision for his future….. “My future plan is that I’m going to learn to research using the internet,” Kamkwamba says. “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.”

Credits : image from http://williamkamkwamba.typepad.com/