Description of Challenge
Drought, hunger, lack of resourcesA young man from Malawi defies drought and starvation by building a windmill to pump up water from scrap metal and with a handful of books he can only barely read.
Solution
William Kamkwamba was a son of poor farmers in Malawi. During the severe drought of 2001, the whole country was starving as soils lay bare. Kamkwamba refused to accept the horrible fate that was upon him and his family. By studying the images in a handful of English books on natural science, he learned to build a windmill from scrap metal and was thus able to pump up water for crowing crops. ‘I tried and I made it. Never give up.’
