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...

Award-winning photojournalist Boniface Mwangi captured the 2007-2008 post-election violence in Kenya unflinchingly through the lens of his camera. But the horrors he witnessed propelled him into a new career as an activist and artist. Here, Mwangi talks to the TED Blog about the events that led him to stand up against injustice, literally, r...

Over the past week, we’ve noticed a lot of fascinating TED-related news items. Here, some highlights. Jeff Bezos, the co-founder of Amazon (watch his TED Talk), made waves on Monday when it was announced that he will buy The Washington Post for $250 million. “The paper’s duty will remain to its readers and not to the private interests of its ow...

Richard Turere is 12 years old, and he lives in Kenya, in Nairobi National Park. It's a park with lots of animals that roam freely, including lions. The lions kill livestock. So he say, "I grew up hating lions." Turere, who took part in the Global Talent Search last year, tried to solve the problem. First, he used fire. But that didn't wo...

Nairobi, Kenya is one of the undisputed hubs of creativity on the African continent -- and TED Fellows are at the center of the action. They're building global technology companies like Ushahidi and BRCK, making genre-busting music that draws on wide-ranging cultural influences and working with marginalized communities in Kenya to make sure t...

Juliana Rotich didn't grow up in Nairobi, but the Kenyan capital has been her official full-time home since 2011. Now, she describes the city as "another node in my network." It's a suitable metaphor for a woman who's immersed in the technology business, from her work at the nonprofit data and mapping collective, Ushahidi, to her development of ...

Andrew Bastawrous dreams of a bakery in Nakuru, Kenya, that will not only make delicious treats but raise money for subsidized vision care. Robert Simpson envisions First Responders, a program to make satellite data available to citizen scientists in crisis situations, to guide aid efforts from afar. Cesar Harada wants to create larger prototype...

Juliana Rotich was not expecting our interview to end in tears. Neither was I. But on reflection, we were both completely okay with it. After all, that's what happens when terrorism becomes personal. For Rotich, that happened when al Shabaab terrorists attacked the Westgate Mall in the northwestern part of Nairobi in September 2013, killing a...

After studying architecture in Minnesota, Joshua Wanyama established his own Kenya-based digital marketing agency, Pamoja Media. Happily back home in Nairobi, Joshua uses his company to tackle some of Africa’s most daunting social challenges -- including climate change, hunger, and AIDS -- while also maintaining a photography website dedica...

This spring, I turned 30. And it’s true what they say: the younger you are, the more you think you know. I spent my 20s building Flying Kites, a small non-profit serving orphaned children and vulnerable families in Kenya. It took lots of energy and lots of traveling, and was a ton of fun. Cue a cliche 'start-up' montage where my two co-found...

Earlier this week, I had the privilege and honor to plant trees with the daughter and granddaughter of environmentalist Wangari Maathai. In recognition of her life’s work promoting “sustainable development, democracy and peace,” Maathai received the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize. She was a lifelong activist who founded the Green Belt Movement in 19...

Kakenya Ntaiya was engaged at 5-years-old, her family members regularly whispering in her ear, “Your husband just passed by.” This was the traditional path that unfolded before girls in the Maasai village in Kenya where Ntaiya grew up. “In Maasai culture, the boys are brought up to be warriors, the girls are brought up to be mothers,” says N...

A cosmologist from South Africa. A found-object artist from Kenya. A neuroscientist from Palestine. A crowd fitting this description (and that's just the tip of the iceberg) can only mean one thing: TED Fellows. The new class of TED2013 Fellows, as well as 2012 and 2013 Senior Fellows, converged in Long Beach on Friday to start their own pre-...

Around 39 million people in the world are affected by blindness -- 80% of which could be avoided if people had timely access to diagnosis and proper treatment. The problem is that in many developing countries, most eye care providers are in cities, while the majority of patients live in hard-to-reach rural areas. To bridge this gap, London-b...

This spring, TED headed on the road, visiting 14 cities across six continents on the hunt for untapped talent. The idea behind the sweeping search: to let you, the TED community, weigh in and vote on which speakers you’d like to see ascend the stage at TED2013. After holding one-night salons in Amsterdam, Bangalore, Doha, Johannesburg, Londo...

By replacing traditional credit scores with mobile phone data, entrepreneur Shivani Siroya has pioneered an innovative way to think about trust. What makes you decide to trust someone? Maybe you have mutual friends or you know their family. Maybe you know other people who went to the same college or work at the same company. Or perhaps your tru...

Juliana Rotich was not expecting our interview to end in tears. Neither was I. But on reflection, we were both completely ok with it. After all, that's what happens when terrorism becomes personal. For Rotich, that happened at the end of September, when al Shabaab terrorists attacked the Westgate Mall in the northwestern part of Nairobi, kil...

Around 39 million people in the world are affected by blindness -- 80% of which could be avoided if people had timely access to diagnosis and proper treatment. The problem is that in many developing countries, most eye care providers are in cities, while the majority of patients live in hard-to-reach rural areas. To bridge this gap, London-bas...

BRCK is best described as a "backup generator for the internet." When it was announced, the idea of a rugged, rechargeable, mobile wifi device captured imaginations as a good way to bring robust connectivity to people in places with spotty infrastructure – particularly in developing countries. The device is the brainchild of Nairobi-based...

Agriculturalist and social entrepreneur Su Kahumbu created iCow, a mobile app that supports farmers caring for livestock. Soon it will become an information-delivery platform that could help generate a whole new crop of young farmers. What does iCow do? The iCow application essentially reminds small-scale dairy farmers in Kenya of important...

Meet Kenyan technologist, entrepreneur and TED Fellow Juliana Rotich in the latest installment of the Fellows in the Field video series. Visit the iHub, an incubator for Nairobi's young technology entrepreneurs, and learn about BRCK, a rugged mobile WiFi device with huge potential to bring connectivity to areas of the world with limited infra...

TED2013’s tagline is: “The Young. The Wise. The Undiscovered.” And this year’s class of TED Fellows will be representing all three. The TED Fellows program brings together young innovators from around the globe, all with insightful, bold ideas that have the potential to influence our world. In addition to attending TED2013, the Fellows will ...

With her boundless energy and playful spirit, Jen Indovina is making that most boring of environmental imperatives –- energy efficiency –- sexy and fun. Her invention, the PICOwatt, enables smartphone users to control the energy use in their home or office from anywhere in the world. Interactive Fellows Friday Feature! Join the convers...

A corruption investigator walks into a law firm and says he wants to buy a brownstone, a jet and a yacht. This isn’t the start of a joke. It’s the premise of the latest investigation by Global Witness, the anti-corruption organization co-founded by 2014 TED Prize winner Charmian Gooch. In an investigation revealed on 60 Minutes as well...

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 ...

Photo: Ryan Lash Remember Y2K? Jamie Drummond starts by taking us back to the most anticipated year in human history: 2000. "Remember that? Y2k, the dotcom bubble... the deep-down inchoate yearning that our millennium moment should mean more than a two and some zeros." Incredibly, he says, our leaders agreed, and as a result produce...

There are two things Africa-rising apologists are quick to cite as examples of the continent's ability to leapfrog past its challenges and end up with solutions that are far ahead of the rest of the world: mobile phones and mobile money. But the frequency with which these two are wielded have also rendered them well-worn. Is Africa’s ability...

Cyrus Kabiru crafts striking, whimsical, colourful pieces -- most famously his one-of-a-kind spectacles, C-STUNNERS -- from recycled waste and objects he finds on the streets of Nairobi. In a candid conversation at TED2013, the Kenyan sculptor and painter told us about his journey to becoming an artist ... and how he's struggled to forge a lif...

On September 21, gunmen attacked a shopping mall in Nairobi, killing at least 67 people, with many others still missing. We are extraordinarily saddened to hear that among the victims of this violence were TEDxKraków speaker Ross Langdon and his partner Elif Yavuz. Ross, an architect by trade, gave a beautiful talk at TEDxKraków 2012 abou...

Wangari Maathai, the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, died yesterday, September 25, at the age of 71. A former member of the Kenyan parliament, Maathai combined not only peaceful community-based activism and forest-conservation efforts, but also government transparency and women’s rights, all in one game-changing project...