TEDGlobal 2009 Fellow Mallam Nuhu Ribadu has announced his candidacy for president of Nigeria. In his first North American interview since the announcement, the anti-corruption activist spoke with TED's Emeka Okafor, keeper of the seminal Africa blog Timbuktu Chronicles. There is a tremendous amount of interest in your run for presidency....

Epidemiologist Chikwe Ihekweazu was in the inaugural TED Fellows class of TEDGlobal 2007 in Tanzania. Living in the UK at the time, writing articles on public health issues in his native Nigeria, Chikwe was profoundly affected by his TED experience. Now running an influential Nigerian public health blog, an alumni program for his alma mater,...

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...

Beautiful water hyacinth was strangling the life out of waterside communities in Nigeria, but entrepreneur Achenyo Idachaba saw potential in the plague. The water hyacinth is a flowering aquatic plant that is native to the Amazon River basin. When plant enthusiasts first encountered its tall, showy lavender blooms more than a century ago, they ...

Nigerian astronomer Johnson Urama wants to promote the future of astronomy in Africa by looking deep into history. With his African Cultural Astronomy Project, he is gathering the lost ancient astronomical traditions and stories of indigenous Africa, hoping to show modern Africans that the science of the skies is relevant to their past, presen...

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...

Two African cooks walk into a bar; 30 seconds later they are arguing over whose country’s jollof rice is better. Or so the corny joke would go. The truth is, I really had no idea what would happen if we got Senegal-born chef Pierre Thiam (TED Talk: A Forgotten Ancient Grain That Could Help Africa Prosper) and Nigerian jollof promoter Ozoz So...

The spirit of the TEDx community shone brightly during the first TEDxGlobalDay in September. In this dynamic one-day initiative, more than 5,000 TEDxers from 230 cities in 76 countries set out to prove that local action can spark global conversations. The day was broken up into three parts, organized by local hosts who managed teams of aroun...

Chances are, you probably haven’t heard of Section 1504 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. But this rule, adopted on Monday by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), brings with it the potential for big global change. Section 1504 requires that all oil, gas and mining companies listed in the US dis...

In an experimental Session 6, Bill Gates hosted and guest-curated the speaker lineup. David Christian charts our course from the Big Bang to today: "To understand complexity, you have to survey the whole history of the universe. So let's do it." Amina Az-Zubair on the UN Millennium Development Goals in Nigeria: "We are making p...

When you watch a video on TED.com, we’re proud of the advertisement you see afterward -- it’s not your usual blaring video ad. We ask all of TED.com’s sponsors to make their post-roll video as thoughtful and idea-driven as the TED Talk it’s helping to support. In fact, we’ll sometimes work with the sponsor to create original video just for us...

In 2007, at TEDGlobal in Arusha, Tanzania, Euvin Naidoo gave an opening talk about investing in African countries -- laying out 10 markets and metrics to watch as African nations gained capacity. Today, in a follow-up post, investor Ryan Hoover looks at these 10 metrics that Naidoo laid out -- and charts how much has changed in the past f...

From a speaker helping to contain the ebola outbreak to an America lawyer standing up for rights in Afghanistan to a journalist cracking open the Nigerian media, Session 11: Fighters was filled with crackling talks. A recap: Fred Swaniker kicks off the day with a bold vision for Africa’s future, which, he argues, rests squarely in the han...

Below, we’ve highlighted a few of our favorite news stories from the TED community. Congratulations to Nobel Peace Prize nominee José Andrés! For his work in food and hunger humanitarianism, acclaimed chef José Andrés has been nominated for the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize. In the aftermath of Hurricane Maria’s devastation in Puerto Rico, Andrés...

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...

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 ...

Ten years ago, epidemiologist Chikwe Ihekweazu helped fight an outbreak in South Sudan. This TED Fellow now runs the health consultancy EpiAFRIC, writes about public health issues in his native Nigeria, and is soon to start a four-week rotation on the ground fighting the Ebola epidemic. So as the outbreak continues, he sat down for a Q&A...

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 ...

The world lost one of its literary giants today. Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe has died at the age 82. For Nigerians, Achebe was a national treasure. He was the first African writer to attract international acclaim, and an outspoken leader with far-reaching influence on both politics and culture. Emeka Okafor, who produced the TEDGlobal confe...

In today’s talk, economist Charles Robertson turns up the heat on an idea that’s been simmering for several years: that Africa is seeing rapid economic growth. Looking at statistics and at the precedents set by China and India, Robertson brings this idea to a full boil, saying that economists haven’t been nearly optimistic enough in their pr...

Photo: Ryan Lash Andrew Nemr, tap dancerAndrew takes the stage again – one built especially for his performance here – to dance in improv based on his time at TED so far. Even as his rhythms – some familiar, some confounding – intensify, he dances as naturally as walking … painting with his body and with sound. There's music in his shoes – ...

"It all depends on what we do in the next few weeks," said infectious disease expert and TED Fellow Chikwe Ihekweazu, speaking about Ebola at TEDGlobal on Friday. What happens next: will the number of new Ebola cases grow or plateau? And how can the world know the right thing to do? Reliable news about the outbreak has been hard to find, espe...

Do you have a TED Talk you’ve always wanted to try out in front of an audience? We’re thrilled to announce that applications are open for two new events in Africa: TEDLagos and TEDNairobi 2017 Idea Search! Anyone with an idea worth spreading is invited to apply to either of those two events; around 25 finalists at each event will share t...

Charmian Gooch, co-founder of anti-corruption NGO Global Witness, tracks money to expose deep-rooted global corruption. In yesterday's talk, Gooch demonstrates that dirty money goes all the way to the top, and more sinister is that these cases of corruption are well-known to leaders and corporate elites. Nobody -- banks, big oil, government ...

Many nations of Africa have suffered so many misfortunes for so long -- poverty, diseases, famines, wars -- that it sounds refreshing and even strange to hear someone talk about the day Africa won’t need aid from other countries. Other cultures around the world have been so conditioned to photos of displaced or malnourished Africans that 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...

TEDWomen 2020 is nearly here! The day-long conference will take place on November 12 via TED's new virtual conference platform. TEDWomen attendees will experience TED's signature talks as well as an array of live, interactive sessions, community "idea dates," small-group speaker Q&As and more. The talks featured in the program have been ...

Shai Reshef believes higher education is a right, not a privilege. In January 2009, he founded University of the People, a nonprofit, tuition-free, online university dedicated to opening up higher education to anyone in the world with a high school diploma and a willingness to learn -- “regardless of who they are, where they live or what soc...

“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...

Artist Olalekan Jeyifous creates fantastical, futuristic images of Lagos, Nigeria, to get people thinking about how we live today. Olalekan Jeyifous may have trained as an architect, but these days, the Nigerian-born, Brooklyn-based artist is much more interested in sparking debate with his conceptual drawings and sculptures. Starting conversat...