TEDxYaba: Community, Convergence and the Future of Africa

TEDxYaba’s vision is to be the foremost platform for African ideas on the continent and, since 2017, we have curated conversations that we hope would catalyse and inspire further corresponding actions capable of setting Africa on course to a more sustainable future. 

Our first event, themed Past, Present, Future, sought to stimulate conversations around our collective past in order to chart a course for the future. We dedicated our next event, themed Reboot, to celebrating ideas from brave and innovative citizens rethinking how we approach problems and those doing incredibly amazing work to solve everyday challenges affecting Nigerians in new and interesting ways. We’ve also hosted our first TEDxWomen event, themed Showing Up, and featured recorded talks from TEDWomen 2018 speakers who, whatever their focus and talent—politics, science, technology, art—are pioneers unapologetically breaking out and pushing boundaries. 

We’ve been privileged to host amazing innovators and thinkers doing incredible work, including: Omobola Johnson on How to Solve Africa’s Grand Challenges Through Technology, Megan Chapman on How to Tackle Urban Poverty in Lagos, Tunji Lardner on A brief History of Nigerian Time, Temie Giwa-Tubosun on The Value of a Human Life, Dr Ola Brown on Fixing Healthcare in Nigeria and Seni Sulyman on Africans can lead the world. But, will we? A complete playlist of talks from our previous events can be accessed here and here.

Over the coming months, we aim to scale that even further. Our vision is simple: Converge some of the finest thinkers and innovators from across the globe in the centre of Africa’s largest technology ecosystem to have conversations about Africa’s collective future. We aim to feature ideas from speakers who may or may not be based in our local ecosystem but whose work undoubtedly impacts our local communities in very tangible ways.

During our standard event, themed Convergence, we will explore ideas covering various sectors of the African society and, using groundbreaking work by our speakers aim to answer these and several more questions: How does technology help people of unrelated tribes and languages to effectively collaborate? What examples of language and economic convergence exist and how can African countries leverage those to their advantage? What does a unified passport mean for travel and tourism in Africa? How can Africa’s technology ecosystems leverage each other’s strengths for greater impact? In what ways can indigenous knowledge combined with advances in science and technology generate new breakthroughs? How can we promote peace and security within our borders despite our different views?

Our list of speakers, date and venue to be announced in the coming weeks. 

TEDxYabaSalon

We are introducing TEDxYabaSalon to our roster of events this year. Salon events are smaller events designed to help us better engage our community. We have adopted the theme Forecasts for our 2019 salons. According to the Cambridge Dictionary, a ‘Forecast’ is a statement of what is judged likely to happen in the future,  based on the information you have now. 

As a community (and nation), what information is available to us and what do these information tell us? How can we design the future we desire given the information we have at our disposal? What tools are available to us and what solutions are we building? What do we need to correct and what do we need to adopt? These and more are the questions we hope to explore together as we zoom closer and have conversations as a community around the theme, Forecasts. Our first of at least 3 salons holds this August, and we aim for a maximum of 100 attendees per event. Please click here to register to attend.

TEDxYabaWomen

Building on the success of last year’s event, we will also host one TEDxYabaWomen event with the theme Bold+Brilliant featuring a mix of talks from TEDWomen 2019 and other activities. We will be shining a spotlight on dazzling ideas from some of the world’s most extraordinary risk-takers and innovators. Celebrating pioneers making power moves, brilliant people who are just getting started, and those who tirelessly show up as allies and advocates.

Innovation Lounge

We will also continue our Innovation Lounge tradition to find and showcase Nigeria’s finest innovators along with products and services from some of our partners at dedicated spaces at our event venues.

Please visit our website and visit our social media pages listed below to see more details. For sponsorship and partnership details, send an email to [email protected] or call 08053482392. For media and PR related information, send an email to [email protected] or call 08166189610.

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Emmanuel Adegboye

Licensee/Curator, TEDxYaba

About TEDx

In the spirit of "ideas worth spreading," TED has created TEDx. TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. Our event is called TEDxYaba, where x = independently organized TED event. At TEDxYaba, TED Talks video and live speakers will combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events, including ours, are self-organized.

About TED

TED is a nonprofit organization devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading, usually in the form of short, powerful talks (18 minutes or fewer) delivered by today's leading thinkers and doers. Many of these talks are given at TED's annual conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, and made available, free, on TED.com. TED speakers have included Bill Gates, Jane Goodall, Elizabeth Gilbert, Sir Richard Branson, Monica Lewinsky, Philippe Starck, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Sal Khan and Daniel Kahneman.??

TED's open and free initiatives for spreading ideas include TED.com, where new TED Talk videos are posted daily; the Open Translation Project, which provides subtitles and interactive transcripts as well as translations from thousands of volunteers worldwide; the educational initiative TED-Ed; the annual million-dollar TED Prize, which funds exceptional individuals with a "wish," or idea, to create change in the world; TEDx, which provides licenses to  thousands of individuals and groups who host local, self-organized TED-style events around the world; and the TED Fellows program, which selects innovators from around the globe to amplify the impact of their remarkable projects and activities.