Over the past decade, TEDxEuston has built a beautiful reputation for celebrating Africa’s diversity and innovations. The series of London conferences and salons, part of the global network of TEDx independently organised events dedicated to ‘Ideas Worth Spreading’, has seen visionaries such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Hadeel Ibrahim, Fred Swaniker and Binyavanga Wainaina take to its inspirational stage. For its final edition, a line-up of artists, entrepreneurs and thinkers spoke to its theme of Legacy: as TEDxEuston ends its journey, what timeless yet revolutionary ideas are building the continent’s future?

Here are Nataal’s key takeaways from the illustrious speakers.

Mariam Hazem – Reform Studio

Mariam Hazem co-founded Reform Studio in 2012 just after Egypt’s 2010 revolution. Still at university, she and partner Hend Riad were inspired by the mood of change all around them and wanted to create products with a social and environmental impact. Their answer was plastex, a extile made from single use plastic bags. By engaging with local craftspeople to revitalise their weaving skills, they were able to develop a range of contemporary designs while providing employment for under privileged women. Last year they were also part of the collective who created IKEA’s first range of African-designed products, their bags and cushions made from discarded confectionary wrappers. “If you consider something you see every day from a different angle, you can change the negativity in the world into a positive,” Hazem said.

Charles Dhewa – Knowledge Transfer Africa

Charles Dhewa founded eMkambo after identifying the fact that informal markets across Africa are “an opportunity to share knowledge through food and trust.” The Zimbabwean entrepreneur’s mobile and digital platform helps agricultural communities to track trends and market information in order to support the value chain of their products. For Dhewa, it’s just this type of indigenous wisdom that must be valued in order to decolonise culture. “If we don’t invest in our own knowledge, it is easy for others to take it,” he said. “As Africans we can only progress if we use our heritage and power.”

Panashe Chigumadzi – essayist and novelist

Zimbabwe-born Panashe Chigumadzi is author of two award-winning novels, founder of Vanguard Magazine and columnist for The New York Times. She spoke of her attempts to document personal and national accounts of women who had lived through Zimbabwe’s Liberation War and often coming up against the reluctant response, “Some things are just not asked”. She said: “This silence is a state the world forces us into, so let’s hear the silence. What is not said is just as importance as what is said.” Referencing the Me Too movement and the R Kelly scandal as just the latest examples of the fact that black women are always less likely to be believed and listened to, she has turned to Toni Morrison’s idea of rememory – of re-imagining history, of remembering memories in literature - as a way to “lay wreathes on the graves of ancestors”. It’s not just about hearing but also feeling, and in doing so, we can decode those all-important silences.

Edwin Cameron – activist and justice

As a Justice for South Africa’s Constitutional Court for 10 years, and before that appointed as a judge by President Mandela, Edwin Cameron has dedicated his career to defending human rights. His talk centred on how to fight against the enactment of prejudice in South Africa, both in the form of homophobia and racism. As a HIV positive, white, gay man, he shared his battle with the internalisation of oppression brought on by shame - shame that he deserved to contract HIV and shame of his white privilege. He quoted Steve Biko in order to address this idea of inner discrimination: “Biko said, ‘Whites must be made to realise that they are only human, not superior. Same with Blacks. They must be made to realise that they are also human, not inferior’. We must recognise the fact that the external act of discrimination has a resonance inside… We must confer the power to assert ourselves in our loveliness and humanness.”

Elsie Owusu OBE – architect

This celebrated British Ghanaian architect has designed such landmarks as The Supreme Court Arts Trust and Green Park tube station and is also the founding chair of the Society of Black Architects. She addressed the systemic racism in her industry that holds back those from BAME communities from thriving. Currently the numbers are falling because, she said, the pipeline relies on connections rather than talent and hard work, therefore unconscious bias creeps in. The answer lies in impartial recruitment, decolonising the curriculum and reducing the prohibitive costs of education. “Architecture can affect massive social change. Urban design is building the homes and cities that everyone can have a good life in, so we should all have a say in them,” she said.

Cheraé Robinson – Tastemakers Africa

Cheraé Robinson founded Tastemakers Africa to connect young black travellers to insider experiences in Africa, and she has been hailed by Forbes and the UN in the process. Robinson revealed that she grew up in Harlem where she fostered “ideas of mythical Africa” and went on to study international development in order to travel meaningfully to the continent. Wanting to defy the negative stories of Africa in the media, she took her first journey in 2010, landing in Sierra Leone. “The trip showed me the resilience of black people and I’ve been drunk in love with Africa ever since,” she said. What started out as posting selfies from the turn up in Africa’s most happening cities soon evolved into a platform that changes the narrative by building a curated, peer-to-peer community. “Travel to the continent will change you, it will rid you of cynicism and you will be forever rich,” she said.

Funa Maduka – filmmaker

The former director of international original films at Netflx, leading to the platform’s first Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations, is committed to bringing African stories to global audiences. Growing up Funa Maduka recognised the power of film to resonate louder than history books, and therefore that Hollywood ruled a hegemony that celebrates Western narratives over all others. She cited Nigeria’s Women’s War of 1929 as an epic tale worthy of being told. “In pre-colonial times Nigerian women ruled over communities and in this war they fought in great and bloody battles, which lead to increased self-governance,” she said. “Seeing heroines in our own image will restore women’s place in society, destroy toxic masculinity and decolonise culture… There is an army of filmmakers out there who can take our chest of stories from history and literature onto the screen.”

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Published on 15/12/2019