TEDx Euston
I am excited to see that TED the not-for profit free talks to the world organisation has franchised out its concept, allowing groups and networks to set up events in their likeness under the TEDx banner. The mission of ‘Ideas worth spreading’ still applies. TEDx Euston will take place on Saturday 27 November, at University College London, Gower St, from midday to 8pm. It costs £50, but before you pay you will have to fill in an application form and be approved to attend. There are only 100 places available. The website looks good but I found it a bit clunky to use. Instead go to their blog – its hyperlinked from the top left hand corner of the webpage, read the story dated 8 August and register for a place from there - http://www.tedxeuston.com/abouttedx.html Once you have been accepted you will probably have to have a Paypal account in order to make payment – which is actually only £40 with the early bird discount, which ends on 31 August. [Yes, it's the most I have ever spent on a book event, I did have a few intakes on breath on the cost!]
However, It looks like it will be a truly amazing day - I only have total praise for whoever has put the programme of speakers together. Under the title of Our Destiny in Our Hands a wonderful mix of thinkers and doers will be talking about Africa. The speakers include authors Petina Gappah and Hannah Pool, the Nigerian publisher Muhtar Bakare – who I am so looking forward to hearing; the Ugandan activist Winnie Ssanyu-Sseruma, and Kemi Adeyoki the Conservative party candidate who stood against Tessa Jowell in the UK's May elections. The journalists/authors Michela Wrong and Richard Dowden (also of the Royal African Society) will be taking part too, and so hopefully by 27 November I will have read both their books It's Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistleblower and Africa: Altered States Ordinary Miracles, which I am embarrassed to say have been on my bookshelves for months and months – well actually a couple of years in the case of the latter._________________________________
Hannah Pool is, in her own words, British-Eritrean, Eritrean-British. She was born in Eritrea in 1974 and was adopted at the age of six months by a British scholar who lived and worked in the Sudan. She was raised in Manchester, England, believing that both her parents had died shortly after her birth. At the age of nineteen, she received a letter from her brother informing her that her father was alive and she had a sister and several brothers who lived in Eritrea.
It took ten years for her to make the decision to meet with her birth family. She then embarked on a journey which took her back to her origins and which she recounts in her book titled My Fathers’ Daughter (Hamish Hamilton, 2005.) She now lives in London where she works as a columnist for The Guardian
Petina Gappah is a Zimbabwean lawyer with law degrees from Cambridge and the University of Zimbabwe and a doctorate in international law from Graz University in Austria.
Petina is also a writer, her first book, An Elegy of Easterly, a collection of 13 stories which offers a moving portrait of contemporary Zimbabwe, won the Guardian First Book Award in 2009 and will be translated into more than a dozen languages. She grew up in Zimbabwe during the transformation from Ian Smith's white minority rule to Robert Mugabe's increasingly authoritarian regime.
She has lived in Europe since 1995, first as a student in Graz and Cambridge, then in Geneva, where she works for an organisation advising developing countries on the complexities of the law of the World Trade Organization. She is currently on a sabbatical from her job in Geneva, and is based in Harare where she is writing her second novel and second short story collection, and where she is engaged in a literacy project that aims to ensure that every one of Zimbabwe’s 6000 plus schools is equipped with a
Muhtar Bakare retired from banking after 12 years, in June 2004, to launch the publishing house; Kachifo Limited. In 2005, Kachifo published the West African Paper Edition of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Purple Hibiscus. It was widely received in the country and remains one of the most read Nigerian books.
It was soon followed by work from established names such as Sefi Atta, Biyi Bandele and Ngugi Wa Thiong'o and newcomers such as Eghosa Imasuen. Kachifo is not just publishing but organises through its affiliate non-profit organisation; Farafina Trust, writing and editing workshops. It also ran a free-online literary magazine, Farafina. He is on the verge of some exciting new projects on the cultural scene in Nigeria. Bakare is a confident believer in the power of ideas as change leaders in society.
He recently told a conference audience that “The internet is our own Gutenberg moment; it is going to democratize knowledge in Africa.” He is also a social entrepreneur who believes that African leaders and intellectuals should spend more time pandering to their own internal audiences, markets, and citizens than to foreign donors and other agents of the subsisting global power structure. While Farafina is still Nigeria's leading independent publisher, it is still struggling - perhaps the greatest setback is the lack of distribution networks - but because of Bakare's vision, writers are energised and Nigerians are beginning to see literature as viable again
Winnie Ssanyu-Sseruma - Ugandan activist
Winnie currently works with Christian Aid as HIV Mainstreaming Coordinator and was one of the first people from the African community in the UK to have the courage go public with her HIV status, a step she took to counter the stigma and discrimination that she confronted following her diagnosis. She also works with HIV i-Base as Treatment Development Worker.
Until October 2006, she was Chair of the African HIV Policy Network (AHPN) for six years. Since 1996, she has coordinated and been a research assistant on a number of studies exploring issues affecting people living with HIV. Winnie initiated Vital Voices, a leadership project for African men and women living with HIV in the UK in 2007 and is also a trustee of both the National AIDS Trust (NAT) and Tackle Africa. Winnie is currently working as a trainer and is involved in a number of leadership initiatives
