Curing malaria is inherently a top down priority. Acquiring communications is bottom up.

To take another example, providing a robot chauffeur maybe a solution to a first world problem, but cars kill twice as many people as malaria, so don't knock the robot chauffeur if he cuts traffic accidents by half or better.

> While at the conference, the young Malawian saw the internet for the first time and within hours began Google-searching for "windmill" and "solar energy" and was amazed with how many hits were returned for each search.

> Kamkwamba was particularly impressed with the speed at which he could achieve things using the internet. "I was very excited when I saw the internet for the first time," he said. "The internet makes transfer of information very instant."

Now imagine a billion people with the same access to information on useful things like good sanitation and building windmills.