Maxwell Chikumbutso, from Zimbabwe, is the prototype of the African inventor who dropped out of school at age 14 and still kept on using his intellectual capacities to find a solution to energy issues that remain a snag to Africa’s true industrialization process. He has designed and manufactured a green generator that turns radio frequencies into electricity. Of course, this is … impossible! It’s impossible because he is “black” and African. Not surprisingly, the harshest critics emanated from the scientific community in Zimbabwe. But if he was “white” and American or “yellow” and South Korean, he probably would have not been criticized that much in his home country!
Despite help from a South African based Group that financed most of his prototypes, Maxwell has left Africa (the underdeveloped world) to relocate to California – USA (the developed world) where new ideas have a chance to thrive. There are lots of such ideas and new concepts in Africa like in Kenya where three talented dropouts claim to have developed another green generator that converts oxygen in the air into electricity! Will David Gathu, Moses Kiuna and Duncan Ngugi be given a chance to prove that they are possibly right? I am skeptical and this is what makes Africa an underdeveloped and “under-equipped” continent that depends on technologies and equipment manufactured by people who are not necessarily smarter than Africans themselves!
The good news, however, is that the above innovators contradict the general belief about the lack of research and development centers or research culture in Africa. This culture exists and is not necessarily found in African universities, but rather in repair shops or in the many Fab-Labs that are burgeoning in Africa. These girls and boys of talent are the future of Africa’s industrialization, provided they are backed up financially and be given the possibility to work collaboratively in modern R&D centers and laboratories. This is one of the conditions that will propel Africa into an economic and military power the world will have to count with. Let’s then ensure that African geniuses are no longer marginalized, especially those who contradict the so called “laws of physics or science” in general because the true essence of science is that nothing is static because everything is dynamic. Thus, the educational system in Africa must absolutely take their findings into account and the financiers ensure that these new ideas materialize for the benefit of African populations.
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