Earlier this month, US President Barack Obama said Africa must take charge of its own destiny.
At the TED Global conference in Oxford this week, one speech resonated with that message.
The speaker was William Kamkwamba from Malawi.
TED Global (Technology, Entertainment and Design) is the European cousin of an already established top US event dedicated to "ideas worth spreading".
Unlike the eclectic mixture of scientists, technologists and designers gathered at the hi-tech conference, Mr Kamkwamba grew up as a farmer in the East African country.
"Before I discovered the wonders of science I was just a simple farmer," he said.
He came to the conference to tell how people how, at the age of just 14, he had built his own wind generator.
But after the family's maize crop failed in 2001, they could no longer afford to pay for him to go to school.
"It was a future I could not accept," he said.
