African Economic Forum (AEF) - 2009

AEF 2009 will be held on Friday, March 27th and Saturday, March 28th at Columbia University in the City of New York.

TED William Kamkwamba profiled on Wall Street Journal

TED fellow William Kamkwamba is profiled on the Wall Street Journal. William Kamkwamba is a self-taught engineer who built a windmill from an American text book he found lying around. Not only did this windmill work, it powered electricity in his village home.

The whole TED community is proud to see William Kamkwamba progressing so much. William Kamkwamba will be in the states next week.

Please read more here

TED Global 2007 talks available online now!

TED has put online its videos of panelists from the TED Global 2007 conference in Arusha, Tanzania.

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala: Let's have a deeper discussion on aid

Listen to William Kamkwamba: How I built my family a windmill

George Ayittey: Cheetahs vs. Hippos for Africa's future

How do we help other William Kamkwamba's in Africa?

Myself and others have paid a lot of attention to William Kamkwamba's Windmill. William deserves all this attention, and I'm sure his family is grateful to him and all the support they are getting. However, how do we spurn grassroots education and risk-taking across Africa? You can ask the same question in another way. How do we spurn millions of Williams to also be risk-takers and inventors?

One of my favorite two invention type of magazines I've been reading for years is Popular Science and Popular Mechanics. These two magazines show how to make and repair almost everything. Next time I go back to Africa or my own country Ghana, I will be giving away all old magazines: business, technology, and others.



We as Africans need to look at small tipping points that make a big difference. I want anyone reading this blog to think about your own respective countries and think of ways you can make a difference by sending old textbooks or computers you don't use anymore.

Quintessential Quote: I saw, I make

I get an awaking every time I come back from Africa. We should appreciate things we take for granted everyday; running water, reliable electricity or even getting Movies On Demand from Comcast. An African Cheetah I met at TED, which I'm helping sponsoring his education spoke at TED about his electric windmill.





William Kamkwamba was 14 when he picked up an old donated Science textbook from the states, which showed how to make a electric windmill. His small town in Malawi where he grew up didn't have much electricity, William was able to build from scratch a windmill out of scrapes wood, and corrugated aluminum shingles. On stage at TED Chris Anderson the Curator of TED asked William how he got the idea for this windmill. His response, "I saw, I make". This is a remarkable African ingenuity story, in any case William is quite lucky that he was profiled in a magazine and was able to come to TED.

Africa has many William's, ingenuity has always been ingrained in Africans DNA. We sometimes need what Malcolm Gladwell would call, a Tipping Point. In William's case that Tipping point was an old discarded textbook from the states that was considered expired! I can't wait till MIT's Nicholas Negroponte launches his One Laptop Per Child (OLPC). What if this computer had an elearning science/technology model that showed students how to make small simple devices/gadgets into everyday uses?

Africa needs a lot right now, in terms of education I think we need to really change our curriculum to a more of an entrepreneur fun model. This curriculum should allow risk-taking and thought-provoking learning. As soon as we figure ICT infrastructure costs the OLPC will still be nothing but a machine that awesome tasks without the ability to connect to the global Internet.