Day two of TED
Just had another amazing day of TED talks. Day two of the conference had some really interesting and inspirational talks focusing on the marketplace from Eleni Gebre-Madhin who’s building the Ethiopia’s first commodities market (Ethiopia Commodity Exchange - ECEX) to empower farmers through information that’ll be available on the market. Also got to hear from Idris Mohammed, a private equity pioneer on the continent who’s committed to promoting modern investment funding in Africa and has some good ideas about investing in Africa and the progress that the continent’s markets has experienced over the last 5 years in terms of market capitalization. Speaking of progress, nothing hit the nail on the head like Kwabena Boahen’s speech during the emergent design session. Kwabena, a bioengineer is doing research to understand how brains work and adapting that to the computing industry. Definitely pioneering work and as he said, the reason why computer chip development has remained stagnant over the last few years is because “there’s no Africa in computing.”
For the opening of the fifth session, we were entertained and touched by the sounds of Abenaa, a singer-songwriter with stunning vocals and lyrics. There were other interesting talks that followed in the afternoon sessions by Alieu Conteh (founder, Vodafone Congo) and a wonderful talk by Ted Kidane of Feedelix which is a mobile phone piece of software that enable text messaging in non-Latin scripts. But the thing that stood out the most about Ted’s talk was his challenge to everyone in the room to change the manner in which they look at the word POVERTY; which in his words defined as Prosperity, Opportunity, Validation, Enthusiasm, Resilience, Trust and Yes!
During the late afternoon session on “Listening to Nature,” we had the priviledge of listening to some very powerful ideas from the likes of Spencer Wells (anthropologist, geneticist) and head of the Genographic Project; a study for National Geographic that’s looking for the roots of all humanity in Africa. Now, how much more exciting can you get!
Following Spencer’s talk, we heard from Simon Mwacharo, an alternative-energy visionary and in my opinion one of Africa’s best. Simon invented and markets the Wind Cruiser turbine, a small wind- and solar-powered generator designed for use around the continent. Now with the photograph we were shown earlier really depicting Africa as the “dark continent,” Simon’s invention can go a very long way in bringing alternative energy to countries like Liberia and Sierra Leone that didn’t have a power grid for a very long time following civil wars in the respective countries as well as other remote and rural parts of Africa.
Now, the world has quite a few true heroes and Jane Goodall’s one of them. She followed Simon Mwacharo as the last speaker for the day and as the old cliché goes, TED saved thee best for last on this one. She speaks with such a wonderful, soothing and motherly voice yet she speaks with power and authority. A wonderful combination to have for someone dubbed by her biographer as the “the woman who redefined man” - TED Global Program Guide. As one would expect from a woman of immense knowledge and compassion for primates and people, hers was a talk of inspiration and challenge for all of us to do good for the planet and humanity.
26th June 2008 at 12:49 pm
Hello! This article was very interesting! I have a special interest in the alternative solar and wind energy technologies because I believe they can help a lot of people in Africa!
Thanks again