A Windmill in Malawi

Somehow I found my way to a very interesting blog this evening. It is the blog of a young man in Malawi (a small African country south of Tanzania) who built a windmill for his family's land. Not that exciting until you realize he left school at 14 (no money for fees) and figured out - completely on his own - how to construct the windmill and use it to power electrical equipment. I don't even know the correct terminology to describe what he did - and he figured out how to DO it. Oh, and he had never seen (used?) the internet.

That is changed now, after he was invited to a conference in Arusha earlier this year, and he now has a blog. You can read the whole story here (start at the bottom for the best overview of the story.)

Someone in the media referred to this young man as part of the "cheetah generation" a new generation of Africans who are not sitting around waiting for the government or other organizations to do things for them, but are instead figuring out how to do things for themselves and their families and villages. The term Cheetah generation was coined by Ghanaian George Ayittey, in his book Africa Unchained. I just reserved it from the library - looks very interesting.

This is what PHF is trying to do - identify cheetahs, and then help them run.