Forget quinoa. Meet fonio, an ancient "miracle grain" native to Senegal that's versatile, nutritious and gluten-free. In this passionate talk, chef Pierre Thiam shares his obsession with the hardy crop and explains why he believes that its industrial-scale cultivation could transform societies in Africa.

Accepting his 2006 TED Prize, Cameron Sinclair demonstrates how passionate designers and architects can respond to world housing crises. He unveils his TED Prize wish for a network to improve global living standards through collaborative design.

At TEDGlobal U, Cameron Sinclair shows the unreported cost of real estate megaprojects gone bust: thousands of migrant construction laborers left stranded and penniless. To his fellow architects, he says there is only one ethical response.

By 2050, global food production must double to keep up with population growth. How does the man "who buys the most food in America" think this can be accomplished? Jack Sinclair, Executive Vice President of the Walmart US Grocery division, shares a few ideas on what we can do to produce more, sustainability. (One of them: re-use the apples in Am...

The democratic process is messy, complicated and often inefficient -- but across Africa, activists are redefining democracy by putting protest at its center. In an illuminating talk, political scientist Zachariah Mampilly gives us a primer on the current wave of protests reshaping countries like Tunisia, Malawi and Zimbabwe -- and explains how t...

In this perspective-shifting talk, energy researcher Rose M. Mutiso makes the case for prioritizing Africa's needs with what's left of the world's carbon budget, to foster growth and equitably achieve a smaller global carbon footprint.

Self-styled wild woman and rebel singer Thandiswa Mazwai rocks the TED stage with an electrifying performance of two songs: "Iyeza" and "Zabalaza."

As of 2005, only 15 percent of the world was mapped. This slows the delivery of aid after a disaster -- and hides the economic potential of unused lands and unknown roads. In this short talk, Google's Lalitesh Katragadda demos Map Maker, a group map-making tool that people around the globe are using to map their world.

Many African countries are poor for a simple reason, says entrepreneur Magatte Wade: governments have created far too many obstacles to starting and running a business. In this passionate talk, Wade breaks down the challenges of doing business on the continent and offers some solutions of her own -- while calling on leaders to do their part, too.

What's as big as a polar bear, swallows its prey whole, and swims at forty miles an hour? It's not a shark or a killer whale... it's the Atlantic bluefin tuna— the largest and longest-lived of the 15 tuna species. Its unique set of adaptations make it one of the most dominant predators in the ocean. Grantly Galland and Raiana McKinney detail how...

With surprising accuracy, Nicholas Negroponte predicts what will happen with CD-ROMs, web interfaces, service kiosks, the touchscreen interface of the iPhone and his own One Laptop per Child project.

Performer and web toymaker Ze Frank delivers a hilarious nerdcore standup routine, then tells us what he's seriously passionate about: helping people create and interact using simple, addictive web tools.

How can we stop the next pandemic before it starts? Disease researchers Pardis Sabeti and Christian Happi introduce Sentinel, an early warning system that detects and tracks viral threats in real time -- and could help stop them before they spread. Learn more about the cutting-edge technology that powers the system and how the Sentinel team is h...

Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the MIT Media Laboratory, describes how the One Laptop Per Child project will build and distribute the "$100 laptop."

Art fair curator Touria El Glaoui is on a mission to showcase vital new art from African nations and the diaspora. She shares beautiful, inspiring, thrilling contemporary art that tells powerful stories of African identity and history -- including works by Senegalese photographer Omar Victor Diop, Moroccan artist Hassan Hajjaj and Zimbabwean pai...

African growth is a trend, not a fluke, says economist and former Finance Minister of Nigeria Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. In this refreshingly candid and straightforward talk, Okonjo-Iweala describes the positive progress on the continent and outlines eight challenges African nations still need to address in order to create a better future.

How can Africans find solutions to Africa's problems? Conservation biologist Kevin Njabo tells his personal story of how he nearly became part of the group of African scientists who seek an education abroad and never return -- and why he's now building a permanent base on the continent to nurture and support local talent. "I'm not coming back al...

Hans Rosling unveils data visuals that untangle the complex risk factors of one of the world's deadliest (and most misunderstood) diseases: HIV. By following the data, he suggests a surprising key to ending the epidemic.

Corruption is a constant threat in Kenya, says social entrepreneur Wanjira Mathai -- and to stop it there (or anywhere else), we need to intervene early. Following the legacy of her mother, political activist and Nobel Prize recipient Wangari Maathai, Mathai shares three strategies to uproot a culture of corruption by teaching children and young...

By analyzing raw data on violent incidents in the Iraq war and others, Sean Gourley and his team claim to have found a surprisingly strong mathematical relationship linking the fatality and frequency of attacks.

Contraception. The topic has become controversial in recent years. But should it be? Melinda Gates believes that many of the world's social change issues depend on ensuring that women are able to control their rate of having kids. In this significant talk at TEDxChange, she makes the case for the world to re-examine an issue she intends to lend ...

Artist and TED Fellow LaToya Ruby Frazier spent five months living in Flint, Michigan, documenting the lives of those affected by the city's water crisis for her photo essay "Flint is Family." As the crisis dragged on, she realized it was going to take more than a series of photos to bring relief. In this inspiring, surprising talk, she shares t...

Hans Rosling had a question: Do some religions have a higher birth rate than others -- and how does this affect global population growth? Speaking at the TEDxSummit in Doha, Qatar, he graphs data over time and across religions. With his trademark humor and sharp insight, Hans reaches a surprising conclusion on world fertility rates.

Your company might have donated money to help solve humanitarian issues, but you could have something even more useful to offer: your data. Mallory Freeman shows us how private sector companies can help make real progress on big problems -- from the refugee crisis to world hunger -- by donating untapped data and decision scientists. What might y...

The term Gross Domestic Product is often talked about as if it were “handed down from god on tablets of stone.” But this concept was invented by an economist in the 1930s. We need a more effective measurement tool to match 21st century needs, says Michael Green: the Social Progress Index. With charm and wit, he shows how this tool measures socie...

Khadija Gbla grew up caught between two definitions of what it means to be an “empowered woman.” While her Sierra Leonean mother thought that circumsizing her — and thus stifling her sexual urges — was the ultimate form of empowerment, her culture as a teenager in Australia told her that she deserved pleasure and that what happened to her was ca...

Over the past few centuries, Western cultures have been very good at creating general prosperity for themselves. Historian Niall Ferguson asks: Why the West, and less so the rest? He suggests half a dozen big ideas from Western culture -- call them the 6 killer apps -- that promote wealth, stability and innovation. And in this new century, he sa...

"Ebola threatens everything that makes us human," says Bruce Aylward of the World Health Organization. And when the Ebola epidemic exploded in 2014, it caused a worldwide panic. But humanity can beat Ebola -- and Aylward shows four strategies that show how we are succeeding. The fight against Ebola is not yet won, he says, but it can be.

India is fast becoming a superpower, says Shashi Tharoor -- not just through trade and politics, but through "soft" power, its ability to share its culture with the world through food, music, technology, Bollywood. He argues that in the long run it's not the size of the army that matters as much as a country's ability to influence the world's he...

"The opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality, and it was vitality that seemed to seep away from me in that moment." In a talk equal parts eloquent and devastating, writer Andrew Solomon takes you to the darkest corners of his mind during the years he battled depression. That led him to an eye-opening journey across the world to int...