Only 2% of Malawi had electricity in 2002, and a 14-year-old sent home from school over $80 in fees built a 5-metre tower from blue gum poles, a broken bicycle and a tractor fan — the dynamo lit four bulbs and two radios, and the village that laughed at it queued to charge phones

Only 2% of Malawi had electricity in 2002, and a 14-year-old sent home from school over $80 in fees built a 5-metre tower from blue gum poles, a broken bicycle and a tractor fan — the dynamo lit four bulbs and two radios, and the village that laughed at it queued to charge phones

The famine came first. In 2001 the rains failed across Malawi, the maize crop collapsed, and by the following year families in the farming village of Wimbe were living on one meal a day, then less. Among them were the Kamkwambas, tobacco farmers with seven children, and when the school year came due, the roughly $80 in fees for their only son, William, was money that did not exist. So at 14, William Kamkwamba was sent home from secondary school …