June 14, 2007
With the cheetahs at TEDGlobal 2007
So I'm standing in line for a lukewarm chicken curry with Bono, Jane Goodall and Google gazillionaire Larry Page. [Sorry, the name dropping only gets worse from here on in.] And I'm asking myself one question.
It is about three years since we started living in Africa. Since then I have attended 40 to 50 special events and conferences on the continent covering everything from cross-border security and arms control to youth and developmental technology. The question is, why is this the only big set-piece event that I can think of that has not been a mind-deadening, life-consuming, jargon-spreading waste of everyone's precious time?1
The event in question was TEDGlobal 2007 – sub-title 'Africa: The Next Chapter'. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design and is usually a big-deal big-ideas conference in Monterey, California. From Monday to Thursday last week it traveled to Arusha, Tanzania.
It has taken this long to write about it for two main reasons. The first is that I spent almost all of the conference hiding behind a camera on the edge of the stage, more worried about getting the speakers in focus than in listening to what they had to say. The second reason is that even now I have caught up on the content (thank you Ethan and others) I am still struggling to take it all in.
There was simply so much of it. And even the bad speakers were worth listening to – who needs rhetoric when you've actually got something to say?
So why was this so good when almost everything else that happens in a conference hall in Africa – and lots of other places – has been so bad?
It is nothing to do with funding. African governments, UN bodies and big NGOs have deep deep pockets when it comes to ogranising prestige events in big conference halls.
Hardly surprisingly, the answer lies in the invite list.
TED programme director Emeka Okafor won't be offended if I say that what he did was quite straightforward. He spends a big chunk of his time searching for African entrepreneurs and pioneers and mentioning them on his blog Timbuktu Chronicles. He picked his favourites, got some of them to stand on stage and give speeches and got the rest to sit in the audience, ask questions and go to all the events. And that was it. TEDGlobal 2007 was Timbuktu Chronicles made flesh.
So how does that differ from a typical tech conference here on the continent? Picture any of a dozen that have been hosted in Addis Ababa's UN complex or African Union HQ over the past year or so. Imagine a parade of government officials and state-appointed telecoms execs spouting phony African proverbs and development platitudes. At the last one I went to, the keynote speaker spent an hour going through his ten priorities for African development – "Last but not least let us remember the need for capacity building...". At the one before that, the event only came to life once a day after lunch, as people rushed to the front desk to receive their DSAs (daily subsistence allowances – the lifeblood of any UN-funded conference circuit).
The difference between all that and what happened in Arusha was best summed up by TEDGlobal speaker and Africa Unchained author George Ayittey when he talked about:
The Cheetah Generation - made up of the youth, specifically the TED Fellows present here, the saviors of Africa who are not going to wait for government and aid organizations to do things for them.I have only ever attended conferences with hippos on the centre stage. Arusha was full of cheetahs. There was barely a government official in sight – apart from Tanzania's president Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete who rushed in on the last day, mesmerising the crowd with his diamond-studded watch. I only heard the phrase "capacity-building" mentioned once, and I am sure that was a slip of the tongue.
The Hippo Generation - the current political and business leaders who are happy to wallow in their water holes, complaining about colonialism and poverty, but doing nothing about it. [Thank you White African for the summary.]
There were no fewer than four Ethiopians on stage – Eleni Gabre-Madhin of Ethiopia's coming commodity exchange; Ted Kidane, the man behind the Feedelix service that lets people compose and send instant messages in Ethiopic; Noah Samara, the man behind the WorldSpace satellite radio; and Zeray Alemseged the paleontologist who dug up Lucy's baby.
Here are some of my other highlights:
William Kamkwamba, the Malawian schoolboy who built a windmill out of spare parts to power his rural home at the age of 14. He followed instructions from a book. "I tried it and I made it," he said to a standing ovation.
The talk by Nigerian novelist Chris Abani and his closed-eyes recitation of Yusuf Kumanyaaka's poem "Ode to the Drum". If anyone can source me a copy of Graceland, I would be more than grateful – it is out of stock on Amazon.co.uk.
Ory Okolloh's combination of gratuitous baby pictures with an investigation into the damage caused by overly-negative presentations of Africa.
Tales from the front line of African technolgy from Nigeria's Florence Seriki, Ghana's Herman Chinery-Hesse and DRC's Alieu Conteh.
British-Nigerian Dr Seyi Oyesola, inventor of the Hospital in a Box, describing carrying out open heart surgery in a typical Lagos hospital. "Does he look happy," he asked, pointing to a picture of one of his assistants after their fifth power cut/surge during the set up to the operation. "No, he does not look happy."
Ron Eglash, the "ethnomathematician" who sees fractals everywhere he goes in Africa.
And of course, the Bono vs. Mwenda & Ayittey & Shikwati development debate
Simplistic it make have been – as argued by Nigeria's former finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala at the end of the conference. But when was the last time you heard an unstaged, honest clash of views at a set-piece conference?
The answer is, according to my own experience, up to now, never. Spend too long with the hippos at the UN and the AU and you could easily give up hope for the future of African technology. Spend some time with the cheetahs in Arusha and you begin to wonder whether there is actually something behind all this talk about an African Renaissance.
**********
1 Actually, that's not quite fair. Last year's Digital Citizens Indaba on Blogging in Grahamstown, South Africa was also good. Possibly because it included some of the same speakers.
Technorati Tags: tedglobal2007, ted, arusha, tanzania, ethiopia
Powered by ScribeFire.
Posted by aheavens at June 14, 2007 5:25 PM
Comments
wow!! what an event! wish i was there. how come the media is not talking much about it? anyway you seem like you are very bored in ethiopia (with this one an exception)
aren't you getting some girls or something?? especially addis has the best looking african girls, you should not let yourself be bored to death like this. go to some of the new resort towns or something. (no thanks to meles we don't have a beach ANYMORE!) still andrew, you can have fun if you try. i heard bahir dar is becoming more beautiful city too. if you are tired of covering the same cultural stories like the orthodox heritage, try reporting about the growing ethiopian muslims. even if radicalism has grown, it seems like muslims are the biggest buddies of meles zenawi. i heard some ethio-muslims saying the ancient ethiopian religious freedom is a big MYTH because they weren't allowed to purchase land or do much before. actually you should go and check out the growing evangelical churches. don't say evangelical in ethiopia-they only know the nickname "pentay" for all protestants. almost all their churches were closed and their members persecuted in the previous governments so you are sure to find some positive & interesting stories from them. or cover the stories of opposition parties in the parliament. they don't get any attention from the state-run media so you sure assist them. instead of giving media coverage to violent liberation fronts fighting meles, why don't you give coverage to opposition parties in the parliament who happen to have the same exact interests as the violent liberation fronts. Don't forget that the lack of independent media to entertain the voices of the liberation fronts is one of the reasons that makes them go in to guerrilla fighting. some of the opposition parties in parliament were very related to liberation fronts like OLF. talk to bulcha demeksa and allow him some podium. if an old intellectual Oromo elder like Bulcha Demeksa is not willing to present crazy OLF rebel dreams of seccession then OLF is too unrealistic in the first place. But that doesn't mean bulcha doesn't stand for Oromos as deeply as OLF. ask him what condition must be changed for the oromo ethiopians. if you are allowed, you can even start a newspaper with a fellow friend or one of the new journalist graduates. you can be a co-founder of a newspaper or something, if possible.
otherwise just go to parties as often as possible. or learn one of the dozens of ethiopian languages. or go to Ethiopian Idol tv show and show your singing skills! LOL
we are starting to feel bad for you. i hope you don't get bored out of ethiopia.
Posted by: ethio at June 14, 2007 8:44 PM
"[Hippos] complaining about colonialism and poverty, but doing nothing about it."
You're too kind. They cause the problem, as well as do nothing about the results.
Posted by: quixote at June 14, 2007 10:38 PM
Very good comments about a great event. Even there I remarked to so many people that if Kenya had hosted TED, it would likely have been hijacked by government leaders, leading to the same old speeches full of platitudes. On the last day, I was even afraid that the sudden arrival of the President would lead to the overhaul of that morning's program.
Thansk to Ethan (blog) and Eric (photos) for capturin what some of us missed
Posted by: bankelele at June 15, 2007 7:42 AM
Andrew, I look forward to your memoirs once you leave Ethiopia. I expect that there are limitations to how open and candid you can be about events there at this point.
I hope one day you comment on how pathethic a comedy that PM Meles and his people are running and how the West is enabling that. Even well-intentioned initiatives like the MDG (millenium Development Goal), etc are big jokes and enablers of theft and corruption at scales unseen in Ethiopia before. Jeffrey Sacchs goes around saying he can eradicate poverty and uses his influence and American naive but 'can-do" attitude to have money come to Ethiopia. Apart from the few improvements, I hope you and your journalist friends point out where the money is going.
Good luck and best wishes for safety during your stay in Ethiopia.
Posted by: Gorfu at June 17, 2007 4:39 PM
You're lucky to have been amongst such group of great minds. Had you been able to sit and listen, I bet it would have been a pure high moment. The rest of us 'commoners' :) have to wait until their talk goes out on TED Talks... which takes about a year according to their trend to date.
Posted by: ZeLaN at June 18, 2007 8:06 AM