Nyokabi Musila talking at TEDx Nairobi

“We as scientists, are trying to create solutions for human problems,” Musila Nyokabi, medical practitioner and technology evangelist said. She realized that as a child she loved science, more so biological science which seemed to explain the mysteries of life in such a fascinating way. One night, after she had completed medical school and working at her first job, she was at a dinner party where Nyokabi realised she could make meaningful contributions to an array of topics and debates, because they had a science and healthcare bias, but was less eloquent on art related issues. This question set her on a new path and gave her a new lease on life.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” is a question that consumed her in her childhood. Nyokabi started to realize that she did not have to be just one thing, a scientist, and began to explore her creative side using different art forms. Her application of scientific methods of analysis, observation to solve problems found a new niche in exploring art and culture. She also started a blog as a means of self expression and to share her life experiences. Nyokabi explored art using scientific methods, she approached art with the scientific questions of “why” and “where” thereby, expanding her world, just like Leonardo da Vinci who was a scientist, an engineer and an artist did. You see the lines between science and art are blurry, where science begins and art ends is difficult to tell. Even more than 550 years after Leonard da Vinci’s death, and even now in the 21^st Century.

Science tries to solve human problems, but is isolated and expressed in “techie” terms that the rest of the world may not understand. In this way for example it does not reach the rest of humanity and solve problems as was intended. So there is a dichotomy between science and art, yet science must solve problems, and art must share the solutions with the world, each person working with both their talents to help make this happen.

Her exploration and openness to art resulted in Nyokabi gaining a reputation for being an “alternative scientist” which she said, explains why she was at TEDx Nairobi rather than at a scientific conference.

“What is it that you are passionate about?” is the question Musila left the audience with. She shared that in her experience, happiness stems from doing what you enjoy the most, and in this way you benefit from doing what makes you happy, and spreading your own joy to other people, so that they benefit from your doing your thing too. It is a win -win situation.

Discover what you are passionate about that you are not doing. “Reawaken and discover what comes to you effortlessly,” she said, that is special about you. That is how you are changing the world. Do the things that you love, who knows where you will end up.

Paula Kahumbu speaking at TEDx Nairobi

A self-confessed tree hugger, Paula Kahumbu opened by reminding us how extraordinarily privileged Kenya is as a country as far as diversity is concerned, and how most times, it’s taken for granted by Kenyans themselves. By demonstration when she asked to see those in the crowd who had been to a National Park in the last month, only a handful inferred to the affirmative. It brought life to her statement!

She shared on how Kenya has one of the world’s largest diversities of bees – over 1500 species. We assume the Maasai Migration is going to be around for generations (for those who’ve not seen it already.)

Her second confession was that she didn’t have a television. Her veranda is her television from her home on the edge of the Nairobi National Park and you can always follow her amazing tweets and extraordinary wildlife pictures.

Paula elaborated her reason why she’s a wildlife conservationist and set out to make a case. “We’ve often been told that wildlife is crucial to the economy and our economic development. However, we’ve been misled to believe that it is important for tourism alone.”

“The world’s current population is 6.9 Billion people. We’re far too many people for the planet…,” as Paula showed and while we’re now aware of our carbon footprint, we shouldn’t forget our ecological footprint. We’re using the earth, our forests, our seas and changing the landscape faster than it can regenerate itself.

“Over 1000 species are disappearing every year,” she stated. Adding that two-thirds of these species have named, they’re yet to be classified and already disappear off the face of the earth. 25% of our mammals are facing extinction. A sad reality to come to terms with.

Paula went on to share information from a recent study done in the United States where scientists conducted research and studied how valuable insects were to the economy. As insects performed basic services for human beings and the value in a year is $57 Billion and that’s a service that is free; remarkable.

The US is facing a major crisis with their bees, having lost around 80% of their bees. Bees contribute about $15 Billion a year to the US economy and that brought home a stark reality of the situation, given that Kenya has one of the largest biodiversities of bees.

She went on to elaborate on the current drought in Kenya (which has since turned into rains, and occasionally floods in some provinces). The reason why this drought is hurting, Paula said, was because we have degraded our landscapes to such an extent and silt is filling up our dams and the water is unable to penetrate the soil and replenish the reservoirs.

The global cost of saving our protected areas is $45 Billion a year for the whole world. The estimated value of these protected areas in terms of ecological services is actually $5 Trillion. She jokingly asked Aly Khan Satchu what the return on investment was.She brought the point back to order that we’re losing the race with our environment and examined the situation in Kenya with the Kenya Government and she frankly admitted that we’re losing the race to conserve our wildlife.

She also told the amazing story behind Owen and Mzee, her award-winning children’s book about a hippopotamus and a tortoise. Paula was working for Bamburi Cement in the coast running a small sanctuary, using a rehabilitated quarry where they kept hippopotamus after the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami that hit the coast just outside of Malindi.

The story, involves a hippopotamus calf that was orphaned during the tsunami and had to be taken care of. The 1 year-old hippo mistook a Seychellois tortoise for its mother, and not longer after the first pictures were taken, they quickly became viral and were abuzz all over the internet.

People were soon calling, texting and emailing asking how the tortoise and baby hippopotamus were. By this time, they had both been named, the hippo; Owen, after the man who caught him and the tortoise; Mzee – a respectful Swahili word for elderly person.

So they started a diary, written by a man who had been working at the sanctuary for 25 years, Steven Twaid. He would show what was happening with Owen and Mzee as they played, swam and grew closer together. Soon, they had over 500,000 people reading and keeping up with the life of Owen and Mzee every month. From this, they developed the children’s book – Owen and Mzee.

The book has since sold over 1 million copies and is in 24 languages across the world. From this, her meeting with Dr. Richard Leakey lead to her running Wildlife Direct which has grown from 7 blogs to over 115 different blogs, each with its own set of bloggers, volunteers and fundraisers. They’ve since raised over $1,000,000 since 2007 and now, enable people all over the world to donate and adopt projects and conservancies as they support them.

An example she raised was in the Maasai Mara where, after the post-election violence, the Maasai Mara needed funds to sustain its conservation efforts to cover the shortfall due to the nosedive in tourist revenues. They raised $280,000 towards this effort.

She spoke of the Lion Guardians project with Anthony Kasanga, a 23 year old Maasai man who is a poacher turned Lion protector. The Maasai people, as a rite of passage, have their young men kill a lion. Anthony, together with the Lion Guardians, has been able to raise $28,000 and develop a strong international following as he educates Maasai in the region on how and why to protect lions.

Paula shared on a trend that Wildlife Direct began noticing – lions were being poisoned with a cheap over-the-counter pesticide called Furadan. Kenya’s already lost 85% of lions as a result of poisoning. The impact on tourism, if this trend continues would be devastating. Luckily, Wildlife Direct rallied support and was even contacted by the US-based manufacturer of the pesticide, who agreed to take it off the market in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.

The challenges for Wildlife Direct include raising support, especially in this period of the recession and developing the technology from their base in Kenya. Changing perceptions from a reliance on governments to bring environmental change is something Wildlife Direct is set on developing in Africa

A key strength of Wildlife Direct is its transparency, where all support is accounted for and results are documented by the bloggers and every action is shown and shared. The tangible impact shown to the world, shows the potential of the model behind Wildlife Direct which can be replicated and applied to different fields such as poverty alleviation and education.

Kwame Nyong’o made a compelling case for Africans to invest more in the animation inductry in Africa.

Actually the figures speak for themselves:

• The worldwide animation industry is estimated to be worth at least $45 billion currently.

• Animation is one of the fasted growing industries in the world, earning Japan more than its steel industry last year.

• The animation gaming industry has been more valuable than film in the USA over the last 4 years.

• In the late 90’s India had hardly any animation to speak of. Today they have hundreds of companies that employ thousands of people and brings in billions of dollars into their economy.

• Animation has become one of the six pillar industries to South Korea’s economy.

So how will Africa make sure it’s not left behind in another opportunity to direct the cultural tone and tell a new story to a waiting world?

After all the world has always been curious about Africa and there are some good examples of popular cultural products on Africa being produced by foreigners on the marketplace.

such as the Lion King and Madagascar….

Once again Africa is in danger of being cast in the supporting role of its own feature story, as the African proverb says “Until the lion learns to write, tales of hunting will always glorify the hunter.”

Perhaps the lion is learning to speak, in Kenya at least, where there is a  a growing movement in visual arts in Kenya, such as the works of Cartoon Joseph and Gado

And there is a growing realisation that special talent for animation exists on the African continent now…….there have been some successes such as the award winning Kirikou and the Sorceress produced in 1999 by Michel Ocelot; and Tinga Tinga Tales by Tiger Aspect and Homeboyz being produced currently.

There’s also institutional support for African Animators, from large donors such as UNESCO who run animation training and production workshops. The British Council have also been offering support to animators in Kenya and Kwame is one of the key speakers.

The presentation ended with Kwame with an excerpt from Excerpt from UNESCO 2.0 “Toto’s Journey” (duration: 2 min)  by Alfred Muchilwa and Godfrey Semwaiko

Boniface Mwangi speaking at the inaugural TEDx Nairobi at Upper Hill on the 8th of August, 2009.

How would you want to leave Kenya for the next generation? This is the inherent question that CNN’s African Photojournalist of the Year, Boniface Mwangi seeks to address in his work.

In 2007, Mwangi covered the campaign trail for the regional publication East African Standard following the Kenyan opposition of Raila Odinga as he worked to win voters over. And all across the country politicians were preaching tribal politics using divide and conquer tactics to win voters. After the ill fated elections, violence broke out all across the country.

The Standard would censor some of the more graphical images submitted by Mwangi although that didn’t take away from what he had witnessed in the field. This experience drastically changed his life and how he viewed the direction Kenyan leaders were taking the country.

As a sign of protest, Boniface disrupted the president’s speech during a live national broadcast on Madaraka Day, which ironically recognizes Kenya’s self-internal governance, on  1st June, 2009 and was subsequently arrested. This occurred after four months of planning with friends and lawyers who supported his work. In contrast, his family thought he had lost his mind and asked him to cease his activities.

In response, Boniface set up an organization aimed to help the poor and Kenyan youth country wide within the areas where violence broke out. Picha Mtaani is an organization aimed at providing a platform for national reflection and building local reconstruction consensus through photo exhibitions and debate. Since most of the affected areas have been left out of the national debate and neither do they have a voice in driving policy and change within the country, Picha Mtaani will engage these audiences and turn them into citizens who are concerned about their lives and how to improve the reconciliation and national unity.

Boniface Mwangi grew up in a broken home with six siblings and five fathers. His mum died when he was seventeen. In the slums of East Africa, it was tough finding direction as the choices were either to join a gang or engage in drug use. As a high school dropout, Boniface didn’t have many options and used to hawk books on the streets. He later joined a bible school and while there came across a book by famed photojournalist Mohamed Amin on the Ethiopian famine of 1985.

This was a turning point in his life as he decided to pursue photography. Without a college degree, it was tough getting into any school. He managed to join an obscure school without camera equipment where he lasted all of five months. He dropped out, bought a camera and started shooting pictures about life in the slums of Eastlands where he grew up.

These photos were remarkable in that they offered a diverse view of life in Kenya. Mwangi got a job with the East African Standard where he became a photojournalist until he quit in 2008. His work during the post election violence earned him the CNN African Photojournalist of the Year award.

According to Boniface, Kenyans aspire to have a better country but sometimes do not ask if they are the best citizens of this better Kenya. A lot of people prefer taking shortcuts in order to achieve their dreams. With leaders bent on building tribal fiefdoms instead of preaching nationalistic politics, it is very hard for Kenya to become a successful country.

In response, Boniface wants to help Kenyans become better citizens and stop compromising on their ideals. He feels this is the only way we can build a better country for our children. Though Picha Mtaani is just a small tool we can use to help build a better country, it is a step in the right direction.

Without doubt he stands alone as being Kenya’s first ever celebrity investment banker. The  author of the book  “Any One Can Be Rich,” a regular columnist on several publications and owner of the  website www.rich .co.ke where thousands of  Kenyans rely on his analysis to make informed descisions about the the NSE; Nairobi Stock Exchange. Sticking with theme of ‘Soko’; The Marketplace, it was only natural for us to yearn for his insight on ‘soko la hisa’; the stock exchange.

We live in an information centric world. The efficiency of markets and the value of goods are as a result of the flow and speed with which information is shared. Aly hinted at the monopolisation of this information that leave market prices skewed in favour of the informed few at the expense of the ignorant many due to the common practice amongst brokers to leave orders unfulfilled or worse executing orders without consent of clients. The digitisation of the stock exchange as well as media initiatives have brought much improvement to this arena.

The sad story about international trade between Africa and the rest of the world is its extractive and supply side nature. Africa’s role from the days of slavery has been and continues to be centred on the exterior rather than the interior. For example Kenya grows world renowned coffee but Kenyans’ themselves don’t have a ‘coffee drinking’ culture, hence there are no internal mechanisms of price control in coffee to mitigate external price volatility. Growth in Africa is driven by external demand leaving Africa at the mercy of the buying states who determine the price due to the fact they are the largest purchasers. This translates to our economic growth being dependent on demand from Kenya coffee buyers. It is a commodity based as opposed to a value addition economy.

There is a revolution in Africa being driven by the mobile phone. There are 800million people in Africa  and 300million have mobile phones. The relationship between the ruler and the ruled is changing. The story of the mobile phone has produced great innovation, convergence and lubrication of social networks .Khan tells an interesting story of an incident that happened as he was driving from Mombasa to Nairobi, his car breaks down and this little boy comes up to him and says “I know Latin.” After testing him he finds out he can speak candid Latin. So there in the middle of nowhere lies a boy with unique skills and knowledge, unless he is connected to others who can utilise these resources they will be wasted.

‘Trickle down’ economics has so far not worked in Africa.  Africa’s resources have not helped the local population, it seems to have benefited an elite. Aly gives the example of Nigeria, which has earned billions of dollars worth of oil revenue and yet the people of the Niger delta still live in pre-colonial conditions ,only that their health is worse because of all the pollution. The opposite case exists in Malawi where farmers who constitute the majority of the population were given subsidies by the government, greatly enhancing wealth distribution. This is where the revolution begins getting people connected, getting them talking and eating well, only then can they start ‘living.’

Tonee doing his 'thing' at TEDxNaiorbi

TED is all about stories and interesting experiences. At TEDxNairobi we were privileged to have some of Nairobi’s most inspiring storytellers. One of these was a skinny, ‘long’, funny, puny and witty gentleman called Tonee Ndungu and believe it or not it was more the than the awkward spelling of the name ‘Tonee’ which was funny.

Tonee is the founder of a youth organisation known as The Kenya Wazimba Youth Foundation with the word ‘Wazimba’ meaning extraordinary. It certainly takes extraordinary folks to do extraordinary things and Wazimba seeks to promote self expression, self assertion and self reliance using information as a precursor to achieve these objectives amongst Kenyan youth.

Relevant information relayed with the right presentation and simplicity is inspirational as Tonee asserted. We live in an information rich world with experts all over the place. However most of the solutions to the problems that we face tend to be interdisciplinary, thus it is important for all these experts to make such information consumable and presentable to the masses. “What’s worse than lack of information is misinformation” Tonee reiterated, as responsible earth citizens we all have a moral obligation to present the true picture of what happens around us.

Maybe the world is like ‘mashed potatoes with peas’ , it is a mix and match of different components and properties with people around it producing value by making information relevant to others. There is more to relevant information than the aesthetics of presentation. Breaking down this information and focussing on the needs of the target audience as well as communicating in ways, channels and language that is conducive to the target group will go a long way in making information relevant.

Each and every one of us has the ability to bring about positive changes in our society. As per Tonee, what probably stops us from achieving these changes are two things; cowardice and love for comfort. We live in a materialistic world and humans naturally are selfish, however reorienting towards ones internal compass and leveraging on the little positive things and attributes within ourselves can bring about the drive and unimaginable scenarios that will add value to the world.

Mobile communication technologies are undergoing immense growth in Africa and other parts of the developing world. So we have a situation whereby ‘everything is at our fingertips’. Tonee envisions the fingertips being all about you, him and pretty much anyone on the face of this earth that is endowed with talent or resources. These fingertips are not effectively utilised for social benefit simply because our laziness.

The main problem with Kenya and many countries in the developing world is the asynchronous development of a few major cities and leaving the rest of the towns and villages to wander in oblivion. That is tantamount to ‘taking all your organs and squeezing them into your spleen’ said Tonee. Now realising that we live in a freebie society and that a significant chunk of mobile phones in use today have Bluetooth which enables the free proximity based transfer of information, Tonee and his associates came up with a solution. Why not use such technology to encourage people to interact and open up information channels amongst themselves?

“Everybody uses Bluetooth for something, for passing music, pictures , information and the like” says Tonee and so they embarked on a journey to teach people how to use their mobile phones using Bluetooth without them necessarily wanting to use them. In a nutshell they developed an autonomous viral application that utilises a technique called ‘bluetooth stumbling’ where they are able to push messages virally to mobile phones and using techniques open to the public. They are able to push messages to other phones without the standard authorisation approvals from the receiving device. The interesting bit is that the application has elements of ‘viral biomimicity’ whereby it installs itself onto the host mobile phone and starts the process of pushing messages to other phones. Hence information is ported for free from one point to another and it a brings a whole new meaning to the 6 degrees of separation concept. Legal isssues aside this technology brings about an exponential increase in information bandwidth and brings about novel and efficient ways to push information to the grass roots without necessarily relying on last mile internet solutions.

“The fingertips are not people, they are partnerships, networks and conversations” retorted Tonee. In order to add value to our societies and change the ills that are there, we need to leverage on what we have to give and get information within our networks and expand our horizons. It does not take special powers, fancy cars or financial muscle to build better societies, it is the miniscule extraordinary bits from anyone’s and everyones’ fingertips that move us forward and value to society.

South African investment banker Euvin Naidoo explains why investing in Africa can make great business sense.

We promised Nairobi an ‘idea storm’ and a hurricane was produced instead and that is probably why this post is rather untimely. We are all still reflecting and making sense of the ‘brew’ that was formed. It was all over the place,  like an ‘Alphabet Soup’ of the NSE; Nairobi Stock Exchange as Aly-Khan candidly put it, at times it was cool and unorthodox as Tony ‘Skim’ the graffiti artist demonstrated. Martha Ndungu the spoken word artist clearly demonstrated the power of ideas in magnificent poetic fashion.

Moses Kemibaro attributed to the future being here, only that it not evenly distributed while Kwame Nyongo seemed to bridge the future and current to the past, by passionately linking animation to Africa’s rich cultural heritage. Apparently music is for everyone, its a sort of universal identity. Classical music may not have originated in Nairobi but Liz Njoroge clearly demonstrated that we can make it ours and it is so much easier than figuring out to whom Migingo belongs to. Musila Nyokabi showed us that there is art in science and science to art, its like a self replicating duality.

A chap called Tonee Ndungu raised eyebrows! And not only from the spelling of his name, but he charmingly showed us how clever and efficient use of technology can be used to do extraordinary things, think of it as an ‘ideas virus’, apparently it exists and it could infect a mobile device near you. Crystal Watley candidly put into perspective the value of the youth and their relevance in the present as most importantly in the future.

The story of Owen and Mzee was relayed to us by Paula Kahumbu. Its an amazing true story about an orphaned baby hippo that was adopted by a tortoise. Now if different species with a fraction of the intelligence endowed to us humans can co-exist in harmony and overlook their differences we were later left dumbfounded by Boniface Mwangi‘s account of the barbarism conducted during the post election violence exhibited after the December 2007 elections in Kenya. It was clear that our problems have been shoved under the carpet and are yet to be resolved.

That evening the artist, the scientist, the social scientist, the futurist, the creative catalyst, the dream engineer, the polymath, the visionary and pretty much everyone else went home knowing that all  is not lost, for in good ideas the future is certainly bright. This was brillianty enthused by Muthoni’s closing performance.