TED EX Gaborone held a conference at Maitisong Theatre last Friday themed “transcendence”.
The event is for people who have gone beyond standard thinking to a level of ideas and solutions that not only solve problems and challenges but propels communities to the next level, according to the organisers.
TED is a non-profit organisation which started as a four-day conference in California 30 years ago but now has grown to support its mission with multiple initiatives and is devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading (IWS). The two annual TED conferences invites the world’s leading thinkers and doers to speak for 18 minutes or less. Many of these talks are then made available, free, at TED.com.
The main aim of the conference was to explore ideas in innovation, leadership, entrepreneurship and unemployment to name a few.
The Chief Executive Officer of EOH Consulting, Kenneth Molosi, who was part of the “talk” said: “Every single year Africa welcomes into the job market 10 to 12 million young people but sadly only three million are able to find permanent employment.”
Molosi said if not careful with the high figures of unemployment rate, the statistics could lead to major social political malfunction and such things have to be made crystal clear to the young people when addressing them.
“Some youth indulge in drugs as a way to ease the pain of being unemployed especially if they have tried job hunting for a long time yet they are graduates. In Africa instead of creating jobs, they create untold misery.
“If the youth do not like the system; they have a tendency of destroying it, rather than applying their mind,” he continued.
He further said that the government must be in good and meaningful relation with private sector for job creation.
The unemployment rate in Botswana is reported to be trending above 40 percent, higher than some of its neighbouring countries; Namibia, Zambia and possibly Lesotho.
Efosa Ojomo, a research fellow at the forum for growth and innovation at the Harvard Business School says most of the countries in Africa are poorer today as in 2015 than they were in the 1960s and he advised people to stop obsessing about eradicating poverty rather they should learn to create jobs themselves regardless of the hard circumstances they face as this is an innovation era.
Rachel Nyaradzo Adams from Zimbabwe and the founder of Narachi Leadership says African youth lack courage. She said the youth should not waste their time with fear, blaming others while they can have the ability to step firm in what they believe in and do something rather than wait for someone to do the change.
Meanwhile, the annual TED Global Conference will be held this October in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
TED media initiatives include TED.com, where new TED talks are posted daily; the Open Translation Project, which provides subtitles and interactive transcripts as well as translations from volunteers worldwide.
The educational initiative TED-Ed has established the annual TED Prize, which helps exceptional individuals with a wish to change the world translate their wishes into action.
