TEDx Nairobi 2010 Event Photos

Check out photos from the just completed TEDx Nairobi held at the Leakey Auditorium at the Nairobi National Museum. In the above photo TEDx Nairobi Host Juliana Rotich interviews Nairobi’s X FM
radio host Rabia.

Click for photos from Africa Knows – TEDx Nairobi Flickr Set

Click for photos from Zulu Safari

2010 Speakers

Caesar Mwangi

He is the Managing Director at Sasini Tea Ltd, where he is in charge of overseeing the operations of this agribusiness which is primarily involved in the growing, processing and marketing of tea and coffee products. They have recently ventured on a small scale in the growing and marketing of dairy and horticultural products in Kenya

Eric Kigada

Eric Kigada is an Architectural Engineer and member of the both the Architectural Association of Kenya (AAK) and the Board of Registration of Architects and Quantity Surveyors of Kenya (BORAQS). He has worked in Kenya and Germany on various projects. He is currently working with Planning Systems Services Ltd on projects including new factories; real estate planning, high-rise buildings and a fibre optic landing station that will change the Nairobi landscape.

James Nyoro

James Nyoro is an agricultural economist with special passion on food security issues in Africa and Kenya in particular. James is the Managing Director of the Rockefeller Foundation, Africa office based in Nairobi, Kenya. He oversees the Rockefeller Foundation’s work across Africa, strengthening and complementing the foundation’s initiatives around the globe.

Jon Bøhmer

Jon is a serial entrepreneur who founded Scala one of the world’s biggest digital signage vendors. He has also founded other companies in technology space such as Snap TV and Pronto TV AS. Jon has been living in Kenya for the past 20 years and currently runs Kyoto Energy. Kyoto Energy focuses on developing renewable energy system development and manufacturing for developing countries. Its headquarters is in Thika, Kenya and in 2009 one of their products the Kyoto Box won the 2009 FT Climate Change Challenge. It was also featured on CNET.

Julie Gichuru

Julie Gichuru is a TV Host and Group Business Digital Manager at the fastest growing media house in East Africa; Royal Media Services. Julie is also responsible for spearheading RMS’s move towards establishing a global presence through the internet and raising revenue through digital platforms.Julie is the first African woman to receive the Martin Luther King Salute to Greatness Award for Advocacy of Active Non-Violence and Peace. She is a fellow of the African Leadership Initiative and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.

Laila Macharia

Laila holds a doctorate in law from Stanford University and has practised law in the US and Kenya. She is the Principal and Founder of Scion Real one the region’s leading real estate infrastructure and investment firm. Laila has extensive experience in urban development and corporate finance.

Njeri Wangari

Njeri is a multi talented Kenyan poet, performer, IT specialist and arts blogger. She has been running her blog for over 3 years now – a project that she initially started in order to publishing her poetry online. It has since grown to incorporate other forms of art as well as played host other poets.

Su Kahumbu-Stephanou

Su founded an organic farm in Tigoni, Kenya dedicated in serving local consumers. Her company, Green Dreams Ltd later went on to market and certify regional organic produce. She has also been involved in empowering small scale organic farmers through providing them with education and markets for their organic products. Her focus is on developing new marketing models for the farmers by challenging the current bias, business and trade regulations that favour big business locally and internationally.

Yvonne Owuor

Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor (Kenya) plays in the worlds of creativity, heritage, technology, imagination and innovation. She works with interdisciplinary teams in the arts and has been a key facilitator of creative, innovation and knowledge economy conversations and events. She intends to expand the regional stake and play in the global knowledge economy through practical and multi-sectoral strategies. Yvonne was formerly the Executive Director of the Zanzibar International Film Festival/Festival of the Dhow countries (2003-5) after which she joined the, then start-up, Aga Khan University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences planning project as Project Co-ordinator. At present, she works as Programme Specialist (Arts and Digital Media) working with concepts, models and facilitating spaces where proposals for higher education strategies in and proposals for creativity, arts, design, innovation, research in the arts and performative sciences that resonate with East Africa’s ambitions are explored. Yvonne is engaged with different conservation and cultural initiatives that co-opt cultural imagination and life, landscape memory, art, technology, story into futures. Better known as a creative writer who won the 2003 Caine Prize for African Writing for her short story, Weight of Whispers, another of her stories, The Knife Grinder’s Tale, was made into a short film in 2005. She has had several pieces–fiction and non-fiction, published worldwide and is in the process of finishing her first novel, Dust and Memory.

Boniface Mwangi on a Better Kenya

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.