Last night at SXSW, William and the Windmill was awarded one of the festival’s top two honors, taking home Grand Jury Award for Documentary Feature. The film tells the story of TED Speaker William Kamkwamba, who has come to be known by the title of his memoir, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind. At age […]
[ted id=154] In 2007, at TEDGlobal in Arusha, Tanzania, 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 […]
Ushahidi — a crisis-tracking tool with roots in TEDGlobal 2007 — has been awarded a $200,000 grant for development from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The Ushahidi mapping tool was developed by Erik Hersman, Ory Okolloh and Juliana Rotich, who’d met as TED Fellows at the 2007 TEDGlobal conference in Arusha, Tanzania, […]
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 TED Fellows program has impacted him and […]
At TEDU 2009, Erik Hersman presents the remarkable story of Ushahidi, a GoogleMap mashup that allowed Kenyans to report and track violence via cell phone texts following the 2008 elections, and has evolved to continue saving lives in other countries during the crucial first three hours of any crisis. (Recorded at TEDU 2009, February 2009, […]
Economist George Ayittey gave a blistering talk at TEDGlobal 2007, laying out his case that not only has Western aid not helped in most African countries — it’s actually hurting. We asked Ayittey for his thoughts on the new book Dead Aid, which has lately been burning up the talk shows and opinion columns with […]
In a moving, personal talk, blogger and activist Ory Okolloh tells the story of her life and her family — and how she came to do her heroic work reporting on the doings of Kenya’s parliament. (Recorded June 2007 in Arucha, Tanzania. Duration: 16:37.) Watch Ory Okolloh’s talk on TED.com, where you can download […]
You can now read journalist Andrew Mwenda‘s newspaper, The Independent, online. Based in Kampala, Uganda, the paper promises “uncensored news, views and analysis” — a promise that has already led to government threats against the paper’s printer. Mwenda spoke at TEDGlobal 2007 and was a panelist on the BBC debate hosted last week at TED […]
After lunch on Wednesday, 2:15pm-4pm, … AMD CEO Héctor Ruiz explained his company’s 50×15 initiative, which was established to enable affordable, accessible Internet connectivity and computing capabilities for 50 percent of the world’s population by the year 2015 … Herman Chinery-Hesse, founder of the software firm SOFTtribe … Nik Nesbitt founded KenCall, a call center […]