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
To learn more about this author, visit Nii Simmonds's Website.
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Nii Simmonds
(Visit Nii's Website)
Nii Simmonds is founder of NAFRICOM, a
non-profit trade association for IT
Software and Technology Services industry
for Africa and a blogger on African
development. Mr. Simmonds is also a
Co-founder of EmergingictGroup, a global
ICT research, training, and
advisory/consultancy. Under Mr. Simmonds
leadership, his organization NAFRICOM
organized the 1st annual 2003 Ghana
Outsourcing Conference.
Through his experience working with many
African oriented organizations in the
field of Information Technology,
development, and globalization, Mr.
Simmonds has become a leading speaker and
presenter on African development, ICT
policies, outsourcing/BPO market in Africa
and other emerging markets, social
entrepreneurship, technology education,
and Globalization. Professionally Mr.
Simmonds is a consultant specializing in
corporate finance, globalization, business
strategy, and outsourcing.
Mr. Simmonds has been acknowledged for his
research in globalization and offshore
market by Mckinsey, IBM Global Services,
AT Kearney, Keane, Wharton School,
Harvard, Government of Ghana, Ghana
embassy, Smeal College of Business,
Harvard Business School NeoIT, ITESA,
Summit Circuit, Bloomberg News, Wall
Street Journal, Avaya, Affiliated Computer
Services (ACS), Data Management
International and many others.
Mr. Simmonds got his B.S. in
Management/Finance from Smeal College of
Business at Pennsylvania State University
and a minor in Information Systems and
Statistical Analysis. Mr. Simmonds holds a
Business Process Outsourcing Master
Certificate from the Wharton School.
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