Young African Built Windmills from Garbage


A resident of Malawi William Kamkwamba built five wind turbines from scrap materials power. The idea to build a wind turbines came to William in 2002 when he was expelled from school for non-payment. A 14-year-old decided to educate himself and began visiting the local library, where he saw the image of a windmill on the cover of the 8th grade American textbook called Using Energy.

It took about three months to build the first windmill of 5 meters high which could provide electricity to his village and was also used to charge the mobile phones. The windmill was then extended to 12 meters to better catch the wind above the trees. Another windmill he built was used to pump the water for irrigation.