TEDxLondon_ the future we make _ Made by Many 22.09.2010

TEDxLondon: the future we make

On Monday, I went to TEDxLondon, the London sibling of TEDxChange New York, an independently

organised TED event convened by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The aim of the event was to mark

the 10th anniversary of the 8 Milennium Development Goals. Entitled ‘the future we make’, the tone was

firmly celebratory and optimistic…perhaps a little too optimistic for those of us for whom a question mark

hangs over the common interpretation of aid and development.

The day begins…

Hosted by Wired UK editor David Rowan (who looks uncannily like the third Miliband brother – are you

hiding something from us David?), the London event was a marathon session. It included live coverage of the

four speakers in New York, followed by an additional set of speakers in London, and was interspersed with

some all-important networking time. Not one for the faint of heart or ADHD prone.

Kicking off proceedings in New York was Hans Rosling – my data hero and the only person who can make

stats exciting. If you haven’t seen them already, now is the time to take in one of his many wonderful TED

talks.

23/09/2010 TEDxLondon: the future we make « M…

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Hans introduced the theme which ran through all the talks: we need to stop talking about Africa as a single

entity. As he pointed out to much hilarity from the New York audience, you wouldn’t suggest that Greece

and Sweden had the same economy. Secondly, he argued that we should measure progress towards goals

such as decreasing child mortality as we would measure economic growth: look to the long-term. He pointed

out the obvious, that it takes more than five years to see the impact of an initiative. I wholeheartedly agree.

It’s madness to prejudge projects before they have had a chance to succeed.

Development: “like bowling in the dark”

Melinda Gates’ talk focused on what lessons international development can take from successful businesses.

Using Coca Cola as her model, she broke down what she’d learnt into three key findings:

1. Coke uses real-time data and feeds it quickly back into product management

2. The brand makes use of entrepreneurial talent to ensure that Coca Cola is available everywhere

3. Coke employs an incredibly aspirational marketing campaign built on the concept of happiness

Gates pointed out the value real-time data could provide to development workers. One aid worker described

working on a project as like “bowling in the dark”: the project is carried out with no real understanding of its

effect until an evaluation is completed, sometimes months after the project ends. Where real-time information

is available, it can dramatically increase the effectiveness of development work.

Across the world, increased access to the internet, and more importantly to mobile networks, is undoubtedly

opening up exciting possibilities for the use of real-time data. This has been most impressively demonstrated

through Ushahidi but there are certainly many other valuable ways this technology could be put into practice.

Finishing up in New York, we heard from Mechai Viravaidya, affectionately known as Mr Condom, who

regaled us with his winsome tale of running one of the greatest 20th Century marketing campaigns: making

“weapons of mass protection” ubiquitous in Thailand. Highlights include condoms blessed by Monks (I kid

you not), teachers engaging in condom blowing competitions and policeman participating in Cops and

Rubbers.

Finally, Graça Machel gave a powerful and uncompromising speech where she drove home the idea that we

need to stop talking about “Africa”. We are long overdue a cognitive shift that acknowledges Africa as a

diverse continent made up of 53 countries with strong individual identities. Not only different countries, but

countries with widely varying opportunities and difficulties.

Back in London, after a short and much needed breather, we cracked on with more talks.

Riders for Health: passion with purpose



Andrea Coleman, CEO of Riders for Health, explained how her love of motorcycles inspired her to set up a

social enterprise to ensure health workers across Africa have reliable access to transportation. The photo

above is what happened to ambulances before Riders for Health arrived on the scene. Andrea was clearly

passionate about her work. Her organisation, which also trains health workers and fleet managers to maintain

their vehicles, felt truly collaborative. It was an example of charity at its best: being used as a springboard

rather than a bandaid.

Wendy Hanamura: my favourite speaker (sorry Hans)

Wendy Hanamura was a refreshing voice advocating an exciting new project, viewchange.org. Motivated by

a desire to tell stories, she was frustrated by the way that a few iconic images of poverty had come to define

an entire continent. ViewChange is a hugely interesting project currently in beta which puts the storytelling

power back in the hands of the people who live those stories. The site makes use of the semantic web to

categorise video content focused on global development, and surfaces related video, articles and actions.

Chimamanda Adichie, a novelist from Nigeria and a judge in the ViewChange film-makers competition,

added her voice to the call to stop categorising Africa as a single story of catastrophe. As she said:

Now is the time to hear stories of what we can do.

I couldn’t agree more. Lastly, Paul Hilder from Avaaz wove a tale around alimentary metaphors which

explored the pressing issue of global food, and possible solutions to finding a “better recipe” for the future.



Overall, TEDxLondon was an inspirational event and I’m very glad I had the opportunity to attend. My one

disappointment was that for a set of talks which focused almost exclusively on Africa, there were surprisingly

few representatives from African countries amongst the speakers. I would have liked to hear more from some

of the exciting social enterprises and businesses which are transforming African countries from within.

Appfrica and the aforementioned Ushahidi are two I know of already. If you can point me to any others I’d

love to hear from you in the comments.

Thoughts on the way home

So what did I take away from the event? The themes of labelling, names and perception ran through all of the

talks. It’s inspirational that a combination of motivated people and new tools is beginning to challenge these

established ideas and reflect subtler, far more complex realities. Collaboration, autonomy, empowerment,

community: these are concepts which technology has taken, shaken up, and given a new lease of life. I, for

one, look forward to seeing the disruptive innovation that is undoubtedly coming our way from countries we

are used to ‘helping’. And I also hope we won’t see many more conferences dominated by well-intentioned,

well-off individuals from more developed countries. Now that really will be progress.

—–

Thanks for the photos goes to Claudius who can be found at [email protected] and thanks also to

Evan Grant and team for organising a great event on Monday.

3

By Cath Richardson

22nd September 10

3 comments

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About the author

Cath is a recent addition to the Made by Many crew and is currently dabbling in strategy, project

management and service planning. She can be found at @ohrworm on Twitter.

Comments (3)

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1. Adding to Appfrica and Ushahidi, I’ve heard some good things about http://www.maneno.org –

billed as ‘a fast, low bandwidth, multilingual blogging and communication platform for citizen

journalism in Sub-Saharan Africa’.

Chris Unitt

September 22, 2010

at 6:40 pm

Thanks for the heads up Chris. It looks like a great project. I’m particularly impressed by

the multilingual features. It’s a shame they’re not signing up any new people so I can’t test

it out. It will definitely be one to watch as they push towards the open source software

release.

Cath Richardson

September 23, 2010

at 9:55 am

2. Sounds like an inspiring day, I wish I had known about it! Aid is *such* a sticky subject but it is



crucial that *all* of those who practice it, discuss it. For so long those on the giving end of aid

have thought a certain way about Africa (one country, right?) and foreign aid (we white folks

have, so we should give all we can, right?). It takes a brave soul to stand up and question the

status quo, and I applaud Tedx for facilitating an event that did.

I take your point about non-African individuals and organisations stepping and and speaking for

individuals and organisations in Africa. At best, this is egoistic, ethnocentric behaviour. At worst,

it is a damaging practice that perpetuates the stereotypes, power dynamics and flows of

information so many development efforts seek to overcome.

Have you heard of Dambisa Moyo? She is a smart-as-a-whip, Zambia-born, Harvard and

Oxford -educated economist and the author of Dead Aid. She believes foreign [development]

aid does more harm than good: “I wish we questioned the aid model as much as we are

questioning the capitalism model. Sometimes the most generous thing you can do is just say no.”

There are also a number of grassroots organisations out there dedicated to providing bikes to

health care workers in rural areas, but I think the majority of these have a heavy Western

influence:

http://www.villagebicycleproject.org/

http://www.re-cycle.org/Africa/Partners

http://www.chinansi.webs.com/

Sara Williams

September 22, 2010

at 6:59 pm

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TEDxLondon_ the future we make _ Made by Many 22.09.2010