William Kamkwamba
Built a working wind turbine from salvage at fourteen
At a glance
- Inventor
- William Kamkwamba
- Life
- born 1987
- Birthplace
- Kasungu district, Malawi
- Country
- Malawi
- Region
- Africa
- Era
- 2000–Present
- Fields
- Science & Engineering, Agriculture
- Evidence
- Documented
- Records
- 1 in this archive
What they did
Forced out of school by famine and fees, Kamkwamba used a village library physics textbook to build a windmill from bicycle parts, a tractor fan and blue-gum poles, generating electricity for his family's home and later pumping water for irrigation.
Historical context
The 2001–2002 Malawi famine hit his family's maize harvest; the library was a small donated collection at the primary school.
The legacy
He completed engineering studies at Dartmouth and works on rural energy and design education in Malawi.
The evidence
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
ScholarshipContemporaneous reporting and TED Fellows record
Institutional record
Documentation strength
- 2
- Sources
- 0
- Primary
- 2
- Publishers
Calculated from the sources actually attached to this record — the closer a source sits to the original document, the more it counts. It is never asserted by hand.