In 2013, international migrants sent $413 billion home to families and friends -- a huge sum compared to the $135 billion sent in foreign aid the same year. Yet the promise of this money, known as remittances, is stifled by a big problem that no one seems to be worried about. Economist Dilip Ratha discusses the issue in today's TED Talk (The hi...

Anas Aremeyaw Anas is known for, as he calls it, the “naming, shaming and jailing” of criminals all over Ghana – yet few people would be able to pick him out of a crowd. The undercover journalist, who gave today’s talk, has brought smugglers, mob bosses and pimps to justice with an unshakeable determination to, in his words, “shine light in ...

Their ideas are big — aimed at impacting millions of lives or creating sweeping global change. Three months after the first project leaders of The Audacious Project stood on the TED stage and shared their ambitious plans, things are already starting to happen. Below, enjoy the latest news. The drive to end trachoma When Sightsavers and its...

Media pioneer Pat Mitchell hosts Session 8: Embracing Otherness: "I suspect all of us have at one point or another have been the other." Photo: James Duncan Davidson / TED Actor Thandie Newton: "The key to my success as an actor is the very lack of self that used to make me feel so anxious and insecure." Photo: James Duncan Davidson /...

Anas Aremeyaw Anas can't show you his face, but his name carries enough weight. Famous in Ghana for his investigative journalism, Anas' stories like "Enemies of the nation," about corruption at customs in the Port of Tema, have blown the cover on crime all over Africa. He started 14 years ago, when he had just come out of college. He rece...

“How can I come from a nation? How can a human being come from a concept?” With these questions the majestic Taiye Selasi, author of Ghana Must Go, closes talks for Day 1 of TEDGlobal 2014. Having just come back from a tour, Selasi is irked and perplexed by the consistently inconsistent way she was introduced at each event: by a biography...

Tuesday afternoon at the TEDx Africa Skype station, host Kelo Kubu chatted with TEDx events in South Africa, Ghana and Ethiopia. It was on the verge of midnight in Johannesburg when Bongi Mkhabela of TEDxSoweto talked with TEDWomen attendees about the importance of listening to different perspectives -- a strong theme in Session 1. Halla Tom...

TEDGlobal 2017 was an important homecoming to the African continent, and a ton of work went into creating an authentic experience, from the curation of talks to the music to the graphics and stage design. Saki Mafundikwa, a graphic designer, filmmaker, design teacher and founder of the Zimbabwe Institute of Vigital Arts (and a TED speaker hi...

Can’t wait for TEDGlobal 2014? We’re here to help! Spend the next two weeks curling up with these books by the wonderful speakers who will grace the stage in Rio. Memoir American Chica: Two Worlds, One Childhood, by Marie Arana. The writer's classic, in which she shares her own experience growing up between Peru and the United States, whic...

Even though many of us likely imagine that slavery is a relic of the ancient past, the practice is alive and well. Since 2009, photographer Lisa Kristine has been documenting those caught up in the barbaric trade. Her images are shocking, powerful, in-your-face. Yet they are also dignified portraits of those with no choice. "No matter how dire, ...

From Bob Woodward and Charles Bernstein to Upton Sinclair and Nellie Bly, investigative journalists have shaped the course of history by uncovering troubling truths of their times. These watchdogs work to keep governments and companies honest, sometimes putting their own safety at risk. At a time where newspapers face a rocky future, it’s good...

We are thrilled to announce the new class of Fellows for TED2016. These 21 world-changers work at the very forefront of their fields and represent 12 countries around the world – including, for the first time in the program, Kyrgyzstan. This group includes a Hawaiian geneticist focused on establishing ethnic diversity in genome studies; an I...

We're welcoming two guest hosts to TEDGlobal 2011 -- Pat Mitchell, from the Paley Center for Media, who hosts Session 8, and Matt Ridley, whose 2010 TEDTalk was memorably titled "When Ideas Have Sex," and who'll be hosting Session 5. We asked both hosts a few questions about their plans for their session of TED. Here's what we asked Pat Mitc...

The MacArthur Foundation revealed its list of 2015 Fellows this morning. Twenty-four people received the “genius grant,” a $625,000 no-strings-attached stipend -- and two of them are TED Fellows: Patrick Awuah and LaToya Ruby Frazier. Patrick Awuah founded Ashesi University, a college in his home country of Ghana dedicated to educating Af...

What is a TEDx in a Box, you ask? It’s a suitcase stuffed with everything an economically marginalized community needs to host their very own TEDx event -- a projector, an iPod preloaded with subtitled TED Talks, a sound system, camcorders to capture fresh talks, and a how-to guide. TEDx in a Box was an idea that originated at TEDxKibera, a ...

When does a debt crisis become an actual crisis? An industry insider shares the terms that hint at troubles to come. When governments teeter on the verge of bankruptcy, they call Jill Dauchy, who has spent the past two decades advising nations in distress. As a debt advisor with financial services firm Millstein and Co., Dauchy often has a fron...

Adam Braun went to school in the US and now runs a nonprofit that builds schools in Ghana, Laos, Nicaragua and Guatemala. In contrast, Sugata Mitra—the winner of the 2013 TED Prize—went to school in India and now is a professor in the UK, where his research on self-directed learning routinely brings him into elementary schools. Both of these...

Congratulations to the first class of admitted students at AIMS Senegal, the newest AIMS center and the latest achievement from cosmologist and TED Prize winner Neil Turok and his NextEinstein Initiative. In 2008 Turok wished for the TED community to help “unlock and nurture scientific talent across Africa, so that within our lifetimes ...

Good design isn’t just about making a great-looking colander. Good design can actually improve our lives, both individually and collectively. In the new Autodesk Gallery exhibit “Public Interest Design: Products, Places & Processes,” curators Courtney E. Martin and John Cary showcase 12 projects that were designed with the common good...

President Barack Obama ended his 2013 State of the Union address just minutes ago saying, “We are citizens. It’s a word that doesn’t just describe our nationality or legal status. It describes the way we’re made … Well into our third century as a nation, it remains the task of us all, as citizens of these United States, to be the authors of the ...

Why did Albert Einstein have such a unique scientific mind? Because he came from a disadvantaged background, says TED Prize winner Neil Turok. “When new cultures enter science, especially disadvantaged cultures, transformation can happen,” he said today in his opening remarks at the Next Einstein Forum Global Gathering 2016. “I believe th...

Their ideas are ambitious, with the goal of changing outdated systems and impacting millions of lives. It's been five months since The Audacious Project's first class of project leaders spoke at TED2018, and each one is gaining momentum. Below, the latest news. 1,600 bails paid and counting More than 1,600 people have now had their bail pa...

Saki Mafundikwa founded the Zimbabwe Institute of Vigital Arts, ZIVA, a Bauhaus-style school focused on African heritage. (“Vigital” denotes visual arts taught using digital tools.) It's the first graphic design and new media college in the nation, and he wanted his students to understand the power of design--and in particular to understand ...

Where would we be without our fighters? This session pays tribute to the brave activists who are in the trenches working toward the things that matter. Making their impact through law, journalism and education, these speakers bring a fearsome and tireless dedication to the cause of human dignity. The speakers who’ll appear in this session: K...

The funerals I’ve attended have all been very much the same. Relatives and friends arrive in all black and take seats in the church or synagogue pews for a somber ceremony where prayers are said, memories are shared and tears are shed. The attendees walk slowly out to their cars and form a single file line a behind the hearse, arriving at the gr...

Gross Domestic Product has become the yardstick by which we measure a country’s success. But, says Michael Green, GDP isn't the best way to measure a good society. His alternative? The Social Progress Index, which measures things like basic human needs and opportunity. Analysts, reporters and big thinkers love to talk about Gross Domestic Produ...

Take two education activists with very different theories -- and give them a chance to work together on a goal they both care about. That's the thinking in the video above, the kick-off of Microsoft's new Work Wonders project, which pairs up unlikely collaborators to spark new ideas. Watch as TED Prize winner Sugata Mitra joins forces with TE...

How did human emotions evolve to help us survive? For the last decade, cultural anthropologist Chelsea Shields Strayer has studied the indigenous healing practices of the Ashante people of Ghana, discovering that emotional pain serves useful purposes -- including the relief of physical pain. In this conversation with the TED Blog, she tells th...

Fueled by personal conviction and in response to family tragedy, emergency physician Ola Orekunrin -- one of the UK's youngest qualifying doctors -- takes to the skies to provide West Africa with its first air ambulance service. How did you end up running an air ambulance in Nigeria? I've been very interested in emergency trauma medicine s...

Libraries are generally where you go to check out books; not where you go if you want to write one. This is an old assumption that Librii -- a concept for a community-based, digitally-enhanced series of libraries in the developing world -- would like to flip on its head. TED speaker Jane McGonigal has given this ambituous project a big thumbs...