Stories for "Africa"
Five years ago, the non-profit tech company Ushahidi exploited existing technology to create a powerful platform that allowed users to crowdsource crisis information sent over SMS. Now the Kenyan company is set to do the same with the BRCK, a wireless, rugged, battery-powered modem ready for any environment. As the BRCK’s Kickstarter campaign gathers steam, Ushahidi […]
Anas Aremeyaw Anas can’t show you his face, but his name carries enough weight. Famous in Ghana for his investigative journalism, Anas’ stories like “Enemies of the nation,” about corruption at customs in the Port of Tema, have blown the cover on crime all over Africa. He started 14 years ago, when he had just […]
Saki Mafundikwa founded the Zimbabwe Institute of Vigital Arts, ZIVA, a Bauhaus-style school focused on African heritage. (“Vigital” denotes visual arts taught using digital tools.) It’s the first graphic design and new media college in the nation, and he wanted his students to understand the power of design–and in particular to understand “the long tradition of writing” […]
When Celine, a housewife in West Cameroon, was diagnosed with HIV six years ago, she signed up to be part of a clinical trial that gave her the antiretroviral drugs she needed, for free. However, when doctor and clinical researcher Boghuma Kabisen Titanji met Celine five years later, she had gone without antiretrovirals for a […]
In 2007, at TEDAfrica, Euvin Naidoo gave an opening talk about investing in African countries — laying out 10 markets and metrics to watch as African nations gained capacity. Today, in a follow-up post, investor Ryan Hoover looks at these 10 metrics that Naidoo laid out — and charts how much has changed in the […]
Congratulations to the first class of admitted students at AIMS Senegal, the newest AIMS center and the latest achievement from cosmologist and TED Prize winner Neil Turok and his NextEinstein Initiative. In 2008 Turok wished for the TED community to help “unlock and nurture scientific talent across Africa, so that within our lifetimes we are […]
Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice — and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding. (Recorded at TEDGlobal, July 2009, Oxford, UK. Duration: 18:49) Twitter […]
On Saturday August 15, a TEDx event was held in Kibera, the largest squatter city in Africa and home to nearly a million Kenyans. Suraj Sudhakar, an Acumen Fellow, hosted the ambitious event. Sudhakar has begun several projects in low-income communities, from improving housing conditions through financial consolidation to sanitation by promotion of the Eco-toilet […]
In his 2009 TEDTalk, techno-blogger Erik Hersman breaks down the framework of and uses for Ushahidi, a crisis reporting platform that emerged to help Kenyans avoid violence during riots after the 2008 elections. During this follow-up interview with the TEDBlog, he talks about his African ties, how the TEDFellows program has impacted him and the […]
From the TED Prize blog: More AIMS Student Talks: Be inspired by the stories of current and former AIMS students — young Africans whose lives have been changed through access to a top-notch scientific education at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences. Every two weeks, the TED Prize team uploads three talks from the May […]
AfriGadget, the fascinating blog that rounds up inventions and hacks from around the African continent, was just named one of Time magazine’s 50 best websites of the year. Founded by TED Fellow Erik Hersman (also one of the brains behind Ushahidi), AfriGadget is a vital — and inspiring — look at creativity and engineering brilliance […]
Economist Eleni Gabre-Madhin outlines her ambitious vision to found the first commodities market in Ethiopia. Her plan would create wealth, minimize risk for farmers and turn the world’s largest recipient of food aid into a regional food basket. “There is no place in the world and no time in history that small farmers have had […]
Zeresenay “Zeray” Alemseged has been digging the badlands of Ethiopia, looking for clues to humanity’s origins. Here he talks about one of his most exciting finds: the 3.3-million-year-old bones of Selam, a 3-year-old hominid child, from the species Australopithecus afarensis. In studying Selam’s tiny bones, Alemseged is searching for the points at which we humans […]
Andrew Mwenda is a journalist from Uganda and an active critic of many forms of Western aid to Africa. In this provocative talk, he asks us to reframe the “African question” — to look beyond the media’s stories of poverty, civil war and helplessness and see the opportunities for creating wealth and happiness throughout the […]
At TEDGlobal2007, blogger Andriankoto Ratozamanana, of Harinjaka, gave a 3-minute talk on a developing environmental crisis: the “crazy slash and burn” of the Madagascar forest. (To grasp the size of the problem, see this NASA image of burning in Madagascar, taken from the Terra satellite.) This weekend, he emailed us to update the story: A […]
Only connect!: Fellows Friday with Erik Hersman, on the rise of his go-anywhere modem BRCK
