Teenager William Kamkwamba could no longer go to school because his family couldn’t pay the US$80 fees per years so he feared the worst when he went home. There was drought and he thought they would all die of hunger as thousands were already starving.
But he remembered seeing a picture of a windmill in the science books at the local library as he tried to pursue his education on his own. He had a dream of bringing electricity and running water to his village. People in his village thought he was crazy, high on marijuana.
Mr Kamkwamba told the BBC News website: “I was very interested when I saw the windmill could make electricity and pump water. I thought: ‘That could be a defence against hunger. Maybe I should build one for myself’.”
So he knocked together a turbine from spare bicycle parts, a tractor fan blade and an old shock absorber, and fashioned blades from plastic pipes, flattened by being held over a fire.
People thought he was crazy until the blades began to spin in the breeze and the bulb he attached the contraption to flickered into life. Soon the whiz kid’s 12-watt wonder was pumping power into his family’s mud brick compound.
Read more about his incredible story at BBC.