as small as a world and as large as alone

8:12pm March 24, 2012

bezdan:

unapologetically-black:

“An African, 14-year-old, self-taught engineer makes electricity for his village.”

Our beautiful, Black youths are capable of great things. Let’s make them aware of how great they—how great we—are.

Apparently, our young brother reverse-engineered an electricity-generating windmill from a picture in a book. Amazing.

This young man’s name is William Kamkwamba and that he is from Mastala, Malawi. He dropped out of school because his parents did not have the 80$ to pay for his education—and yet, at age 14, he reverse engineered a windmill simply from looking at pictures in a book. This is a stunning achievement at any age and in any circumstance.

So why am I not hearing about this in major engineering publications?? I regularly read many tech and engineering blogs, news sites, etc. and did not hear about this until right now. That is appalling. Malawi (and Africa itself) is home to many young men and women like him whose gifts and abilities should be nurtured. This type of engineering ingenuity deserves to be celebrated ten times more than the shiniest new gadgetry.

(That said, if anyone knows of specific engineering-oriented news sources that did talk about this, please let me know. My newsfeeds are clearly in sore need of updating…)

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