15-Year-Old From Africa Builds Radio Station Out Of Discarded Electronics

News
By Mack Rawden
published

Genius doesn’t favor any one particular race, socioeconomic class or location. Sometimes the smartest amongst us are born with a silver spoon in their mouths and sometimes they’re born with few resources beyond their own brains. 15-year-old Kelvin Doe most definitely falls into the latter camp, though if you asked him, he’d tell you the world is filled with discarded resources.

Born in Sierra Leone and frustrated by his town’s frequent loss of power, he dug through trash cans, salvaged broken electronic equipment and through trial and error, began building batteries, generators and transmitters. A few years ago, he even built the entire town a radio station so they can hold debates, talk about issues and listen to music.

Earlier this year, he was invited to MIT for three weeks to share ideas and study. Many of his interactions were filmed, and the subsequent news story is currently racing around the Internet. You can take a look at Kelvin’s genius below…

Is there even a real question as to whether this kid can actually build a windmill? He’ll probably crush this project our of the park within a few months. Hopefully, once he gets a little bit older, he’ll be able to start working with the government on larger projects that would impact residents in Sierra Leone beyond just those inside his town.

Mack Rawden
Editor In Chief

Mack Rawden is the Editor-In-Chief of CinemaBlend. He first started working at the publication as a writer back in 2007 and has held various jobs at the site in the time since including Managing Editor, Pop Culture Editor and Staff Writer. He now splits his time between working on CinemaBlend’s user experience, helping to plan the site’s editorial direction and writing passionate articles about niche entertainment topics he’s into. He graduated from Indiana University with a degree in English (go Hoosiers!) and has been interviewed and quoted in a variety of publications including Digiday. Enthusiastic about Clue, case-of-the-week mysteries, a great wrestling promo and cookies at Disney World. Less enthusiastic about the pricing structure of cable, loud noises and Tuesdays.