TED Community

I am passionate about music - listening to it, playing it, singing to it, going to concerts etc. Also, I am quite an avid reader - I read all kinds of literature (recently less and less fiction though). Finally, I guess I am passionate about my work or profession. Being a teacher has helped me learn more about people in general, and has provided me different opportunities to study.

learning

Making a difference

Proving that fit-for-purpose digital technologies, contextualized for the African context, can be scalable, sustainable and effective - more so than any traditional approaches. Many of the challenges we see in Africa were solved long ago in WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic) countries, before the advent of digital technology. Typically, they were solved using analogue solutions, and even if things weren’t perfect, they worked well enough for everyone to forget the flaws. Ironically, this has the effect of making inefficiencies less visible, and therefore provides less of an incentive for the adoption of innovative digital solutions. This ‘noticeability’ puts African innovators ahead of the curve. This is what gives African innovators an advantage. We can look back at these limited, "good enough" historical solutions, and we can see their deficiencies and inefficiencies. Africa is in a position to solve its challenges using exponential technologies, and applying ‘experiential wisdom’, create solutions for problems that are not, at least initially, prioritized in WEIRD countries; and in doing so, it can leapfrog what exists. The African context provides the most fertile ground in which to innovate, because it is where these problems are most deeply felt, and are big enough both to motivate investment and deliver high return on impact.