TED Global Day One

Wow! A great start. To be honest, I didn't know what to expect from TED Africa. I don't understand all of the problems, or the cultures. But today has been a great learning experience. Actually all the days have been great learning experiences.

I flew over from Amsterdam with Euvin Naidoo who was the first speaker of the conference. Our plane conversation centered around investment in Africa. Today he revealed that five African stock markets are yielding the strongest returns in the world.

That provided a perfect springboard for Andrew Mwenda, a journalist and social critic (read troublemaker – my kind of guy), and passionate speaker. Andrew is so outspoken he spent some time in prison for his comments about the Ugandan government. So, as it turns out, according to Andrew, all of us bleeding hearts from rich countries are doing the absolute wrong thing by giving aid to African countries. Andrew asked "has anyone in this room benefited or had a relative who benefited from aid?" A surprise answer came from Bono (all I could make out of the comment was "bullocks," but Bono would elaborate a little later). Andrew continued to say that the key to economic development was investment in viable business opportunities, that, as his TED bio states, "economic development comes from activities of self-interested individuals in the marketplace."

Carol Pineau, producer and director of "Africa, Open For Business," seconded Andrew's points by presenting three of Africa's great business success stories. I thought Carol showed her true passion for storytelling when explaining why she wanted to tell the "Africa,  Open For Business" story. She said she wanted to tell a story that no one else was focusing on, but was more important for Africa than following refugees around. That story was an optimistic story of opportunity. Carol found a truth that the rest of the journalist community is ignoring. Shame on them. Carol is absolutely right. Sharing stories of success may not be as sensational as death and refugee camps and it may not sell papers in our "if it bleeds, it leads" news culture, but it will do more to breed more success than anything else.

OK, so you gotta love Bono if for no other reason than he's absolutely genuine. Bono is not a great public speaker (there, I said it), but there is no doubt he cares and believes with all his might in what he is doing. Bono started by referencing the Marshal Plan's role in Germany and then said that government aid allowed him to get an education. Bono was obviously taking a position contrary to Andrew and Carol, but he tempered it during the Q&A by stating that we should only invest in aid that we know works. Bono threw out a stunning number: 3,000 kids a day day from malaria. That's almost 11 million kids a year. Bono said that if we knew 11 million kids were going to die as the result of global warming next year, we would find a solution and we would hear about it in the news. His point was simple –anyone who doesn't think this is a crisis is off his or her rocker.

To be fair after the discussion with Andrew and later when Bono answered questions, I got the impression that there were a few disagreements, but the two were not so far off from each other to reach common ground. Of course I could be wrong.        

The day also included a talk by Zeray Alemseged, the paleontologist who discovered the 3.3-million year old bones of a three-year old hominid. This is significant because it is the only infant remains ever discovered.

The day closed with the brilliant filmmaker Newton Aduaka. He showed some scenes from his film "Ezra" and two of his other works. Not only does he shoot beautiful film, but he truly understands acting. The performances in his film are truly magical. Check him out if you can.

One other big thing today, Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor sent a message to TED in which she praised the goal of TED Global and pointed out the similarities (and some of the differences, in a good way) between TED and the G8 Summit.

Sorry, no photos. I'll post those when I have a better connection.

More to come...