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Kelvin Doe – whiz kid from Sierra Leone built own battery, radio transmitter
Kelvin Doe. PHOTO/Paula Aguilera, MIT Media Lab
At the age of 13, Kelvin Doe, while living in Sierra Leone created batteries and generators using materials he picked up around the house or from trash bins. Now, he’s wowing experts in the United States.
Doe, now 16, became the youngest person in history to be invited to the “Visiting Practitioner’s Program” at MIT, according to CNN.
Doe, a completely self-taught engineer, manages his own fully-staffed community radio station in Sierra Leone where he broadcasts news and plays music under the moniker ‘DJ Focus.’ The radio station is powered by a generator created from a deteriorating voltage stabilizer, which he found in the trash, while a simple antenna lets his neighborhood listen in.
“They call me DJ Focus because I believe if you focus, you can do an invention perfectly,” Doe said in a video produced by @radical.media for their THNKR YouTube channel.
It took several attempts before Doe finally had a working prototype for the battery — a combination of soda, acid and metal, wrapped together by tape.
MIT discovered Doe during Innovate Salone, a national high school innovation challenge held in Sierra Leone by an international organization called Global Minimum. Doctoral student David Sengeh recognized his skills right away.
