Before he hit eighteen, Fred Swaniker had lived in Ghana, Gambia, Botswana and Zimbabwe. What he learned from a childhood across Africa was that while good leaders can't make much of a difference in societies with strong institutions, in countries with weak structures, leaders could make or break a country. In a passionate talk the entrepreneur ...

In a poetic, personal talk, TED Fellow Katlego Kolanyane-Kesupile examines the connection between her modern queer lifestyle and her childhood upbringing in a rural village in Botswana. "In a time where being brown, queer, African and seen as worthy of space means being everything but rural, I fear that we're erasing the very struggles that got ...

Katlego Kolanyane-Kesupile is the founder of the Queer Shorts Showcase Festival, Botswana's first and only LGBT-themed theatre festival.

Steve Boyes is working to study and conserve the endangered Okavango Delta in Botswana.

Documentary filmmakers Beverly and Dereck Joubert have worked to conserve wildlife for more than 25 years. As National Geographic Explorers in Residence, the couple influences public policy and perceptions.

When her hashtag #IfAfricaWasABar went viral, Botswana writer Siyanda Mohutsiwa triggered a lighthearted but electrifying discussion of some serious African issues.

Dereck and Beverly Joubert have been living in the bush in Botswana, making wildlife and conservation films together, for more than 30 years. Their films have shaped an intimate and profound narrative about the interconnected relationship among people, animals and the land, adding layers of understanding based on years of close and constant ...

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About this event: we kick start the year 2020 with talks that spark conversations about the future. we look at the current systems, careers and deep within ourselves to check if we are ready for the forth industrial revolution. we ask ourselves these main questions: will our social institutions survive i.e will education ,health and others be the same will non ...

It may be the age of big data, but it’s still very hard to know how many children were born in Bolivia or Botswana last year, or to know something as simple as which clinics in the developing world have medicine and which don’t. Until recently, there was only one way to find answers to questions like these -- to send a group of workers out i...

Paul Collier studies the poorest people on earth -- the 1 in 9 humans living in dysfunctional countries with broken economies, places whose income gaps are so wide it's hard for westerners to wrap their minds around it. In 2007, his book The Bottom Billion broke down the problems facing this group of people, stuck in failed and failing state...

Host Gerry Garbulsky has a feeling that this may be the session with "the most heavy accents” in TED history. The organizer of TEDxRiodelaPlata in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Garbulsky curated each speaker in his session because they’ve given a TEDx talk he loved. With speakers from Botswana, Brazil and Hungary, these ideas are truly without bo...

Documentary filmmakers Beverly and Dereck Joubert have worked to conserve wildlife in Africa for more than 30 years. Last year, I visited the Jouberts in one of the Great Plains safari camps and preserves they founded: Great Plains Conservation, launched a few years ago in Botswana and Kenya. You can read about my 2016 visit and their work i...

On Sunday, June 22, 2014 the Okavango Delta in Botswana, home to the world’s largest remaining elephant population, was named the 1,000th UNESCO World Heritage Site. Why should we care? Well, says TED Fellow and National Geographic Emerging Explorer Steve Boyes, because wilderness matters. “Wilderness cannot be restored or re-created, only destr...

  When we started TEDWomen in 2010, we felt strongly that we wanted to include a talks that break the traditional TED Talk model and present pairs of speakers instead of solos. Our first “Duet” featured the married couple Beverly and Dereck Joubert. I wrote about them on this blog earlier this month. As National Geographic Explorers in...

Meet the new class of TEDGlobal 2017 Fellows! Representing 18 countries -- including, for the first time in our program, Somalia, Uruguay, Liberia and Zimbabwe -- this class clears a high bar of talent, creativity and eccentricity. Among those selected, you'll find a Somali computer scientist catalyzing the tech scene in Somalia and Somalila...

About this event: TEDxMahikeng 2019: Pathways How do we find ourselves here? Founded by Kgosi Molema Tawana, way back when rocks were soft, our patch of the world remains the beloved home of a proud people, Barolong boo Ratshidi. Once misnamed Mafeking, we were reborn Mafikeng, and have reinvented as Mahikeng. With each incarnation, we embraced a renew...

Healthcare is at a turning point. Big data, evolving consumer preferences and shifting cost structures are just a few of the many complex factors shaping the opportunities and challenges that will define the future. How can we all become forces for positive change and progress? For the first time, TED partnered with Optum, a health servic...

“The politics of joy” is a phrase that resonates through this session of TED Fellows talks. These talks, by and large, come from people who’ve taken a hard look at the world and its problems and decided to engage joyfully, with creativity, fresh insight and heart. From a soccer project that empowers young refugees, to an SMS service for cow ...

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Pan African educator

Steve Boyes is passionately devoted to the preservation of wilderness, as well as to restoring and protecting species and landscapes already damaged by human intervention. At TED2014, the ornithologist and National Geographic Emerging Explorer spoke to the TED Blog about his work to save South Africa’s endangered Cape parrot and his campaign...

By Paul Farmer At the end of almost a decade spent in teaching hospitals and clinics, most (we hope all) physicians have honed their clinical acumen by focusing on the care of the patient who is right in front of them. Perhaps this is as it should be: as patients, we don't want our doctors (or nurses or social workers) distracted by "outs...

Emily Oster re-examines the stats on AIDS in Africa from an economic perspective and reaches a stunning conclusion: Everything we know about the spread of HIV on the continent is wrong.

In this moving talk, documentary photographer Kristen Ashburn shares unforgettable images of the human impact of AIDS in Africa.