WILLIAM KAMKWAMBA

by Tara Harte, with excerpts from

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by
William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer

William Kamkwamba was born in Malawi, Africa, on August 5,

1987. His dad was a farmer and his mom looked after William,
his sisters, and their home.

William’s family lived in the “breadbasket” of Malawi. This

meant that the area produced the most maize (corn) in the
country. Farmers, like William’s dad, also grew tobacco. They
sold it to buy more seeds and fertilizer for the next year’s crop.
Maize, however, was a family’s main
source of food all year round: it was served at every meal. Farmers also
sold maize at the local market. As long as it rained, farmers could grow
maize. They believed they would never go hungry.

But one day, too much rain came, followed by months of no rain at all.
William tells us what happened in December 2000.
William’s family harvested only five sacks of grain, when most years they harvested enough
grain to fill a large storage room. The five sacks had to last until the next harvest, one whole year
away. In emergencies like this, farmers could sometimes go to the government to get grain.
However, the Malawian government had sold all the grain to pay off its debts to other countries.
There was nothing left to give to farmers. William’s parents decided they would try to make their
five sacks of grain stretch by eating one small meal per day. William describes a typical meal.

As the months
passed, William and
his family began to
starve, and they
weren’t the only
ones. More than
seven million
people, about three-
quarters of
Malawi’s
population, were
going hungry.

William had to drop out of school because his family couldn’t afford to pay the $80-a-year
tuition fee. He was devastated. Instead of going to school, William helped his father plant the
next year’s maize crop. It was November, and the crops would be ready in late March. When the
maize was finally ready to harvest, William and his family were ecstatic. He describes what it
was like to eat a cob of corn after nearly six months of starvation.
Even though William hadn’t been going to school during the famine,
he continued to read and learn on his own. He borrowed a book, Using Energy, from his school’s
library. It had photos of large windmills on its cover. The book said the windmills could create
electricity and pump water. This gave William an idea—and hope for the future.
William’s first windmill was only 15 feet tall to begin with. Later, William moved it away from
his house and raised it to 36 feet to make it more effective.

William built his windmill out of scrap metal, wood, plastic, and bicycle parts. It took him two
months to do it. Many people in his village thought he was crazy for even trying, but the
windmill worked! Through word of mouth, newspaper and radio reporters eventually heard
about William’s windmill.
They wrote stories about him, and he was invited to a big conference in the United States. People
were so impressed with William’s creativity and initiative, they donated money so that he could
go back to school and help his family and village.

What is William’s hope for the future?

 

Two more windmills have been built in William’s village. William and his friends continue to
build different things, such as a deep-water well and a school, to improve their community.

Source: Excerpts totalling 578 words from pp. 94, 123-4, 148, 159, 270 from
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba and
Bryan Mealer COPYRIGHT © 2009 By William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer.
Used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

Achievements
 When The Daily Times in Blantyre, the commercial capital, wrote a story on
Kamkwamba's wind turbine in November 2006, TED conference director Emeka
Okafor invited Kamkwamba to talk at TEDGlobal 2007 in Arusha, Tanzania as a guest.
His speech moved the audience, and several venture capitalists at the conference pledged
to help finance his secondary education.
 Among other appearances, Kamkwamba was interviewed on The Daily Show on 7
October 2009. In addition, he was invited to and attended the 2011 Google Science
Fair introductory meeting, where he was a guest speaker.
 Kamkwamba's book, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, was selected as the 2013 "1
Book, 1 Community" title for Loudoun County, Virginia's Public Library system. "1book
1community is a countywide reading program that promotes community dialog and
understanding through the shared experience of reading and discussing the same book."
 Kamkwamba is the subject of the documentary film William and the Windmill, which
won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary Feature[14] at the 2013 South By
Southwest film festival in Austin, Texas.
 In 2013 TIME magazine named Kamkwamba one of the "30 People Under 30 Changing
The World".
 William’s inspiring story is told in his New York Times bestselling memoir The Boy
Who Harnessed the Wind, co-authored with Bryan Mealer, and in the Netflix film
adaptation, directed by Chiwetel Ejiofor, which was awarded the Alfred P. Sloan Prize at
the Sundance Film festival.
Since its debut, William’s book has been published in two additional editions, a young
readers version, and a children’s book. The autobiography has sold more than 1 million
copies and been translated in nearly twenty languages worldwide. William has been
featured on The Wall Street Journal, Nyasa Times, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,
and Good Morning America with Diane Sawyer.
 After graduating from Dartmouth College in Environmental Studies, William began work
as a Global Fellow for the design firm IDEO.org. William is an entrepreneur, TED
Fellow, and has worked with the WiderNet Project to develop appropriate technologies
curriculums focused on bridging the gap between “knowing” and “doing” for young
people in Malawi and across the world.
William splits his time between the U.S. and Malawi and is currently working full-time
with the Moving Windmills Project to bring the Moving Windmills Innovation Center
to life in Kasungu, Malawi. He has built a solar-powered water pump that supplies the
first drinking water in his village and two other wind turbines, the tallest standing at 12
meters (39 ft), and is planning two more, including one in Lilongwe, the political capital
of Malawi.