The good news on poverty Yes theres good news Bono

Chris Anderson asked me if I could put

the last 25 years of anti-poverty

campaigning into ten minutes for Ted

that’s an English man asking an irishman

to be succinct I said I said Chris that

would take a miracle

he said bono wouldn’t that be a good use

of your messianic complex so yeah and I

thought let’s go even further let’s go

been 25 years let’s go back before

Christ three millennia to a time when at

least in my head the journey for justice

to march against inequality and poverty

really began 3,000 years ago

civilization just getting started on the

banks of the Nile some slaves Jewish

shepherds in this instance smelling of

sheep I guess proclaim to the

Pharaoh

sitting high on his throne we your

majesty Ness are equal to you and the

Pharaoh replies oh no you you’re

miserable nosov got to be kidding and

they say no no that that’s what it says

here in our holy book cut to our century

same country same pyramids and other

people spreading the same idea of

equality with a different book this time

it’s called the Facebook crowds are

gathered in Tahrir Square they turn a

social network from virtual to actual

and kind of rebooted the 21st century

not to undersell how messy and ugly the

aftermath of the Arab Spring has been

neither to oversell the role of

Technology but these things have given a

sense of what’s possible when the

age-old model of power the pyramid gets

turned upside down putting the people on

top and the Pharaohs of today on the

bottom as it were it’s also shown us

that something as powerful as

information and the sharing of it

can challenge inequality cuz fact

like people want to be free and when

they’re free liberty is usually around

the corner even for the poorest of the

poor facts that can challenge cynicism

and the apathy that leads to inertia

facts that tell us what’s working and

more importantly what’s not so we can

fix it

facts that if we hear them and heed them

could help us meet the challenge but

Nelson Mandela made back in 2005 when he

asked us to be that great generation

that overcomes that most awful offence

to humanity extreme poverty facts that

build a powerful momentum so I thought

forget the rock opera

forget the bombast my usual tricks

the only thing singing today would be

the facts for I have truly embraced my

inner nerd so exit the rock star enter

the evidence based activist the fact

amidst and

and what the the because what the facts

are telling us is that the long slow

journey humanity’s long slow journey of

equality is actually speeding up look at

what’s being achieved look at the

pictures these datasets print since the

year 2000 since the turn of the

millennium there are 8 million more AIDS

patients getting life-saving

antiretroviral drugs malaria there are

eight countries in sub-saharan Africa

that have their death rates cut by 75%

for kids under 5 child mortality kids

under 5 it’s down by 2.6 5 million a

year that’s a rate of 7,000 256

children’s lives saved each day Wow

Wow let’s just stop for a second

actually and think about that have you

read anything anywhere in the last week

that is remotely as important as that

number Wow

great news it drives me nuts that most

people don’t seem to know this news

7,000 kids a day here’s two of them this

is Michael and and Benedicta and they’re

alive thanks in large part to dr.

Patricia Asamoah she’s amazing and the

Global Fund which all of you financially

support whether you know it or not and

the Global Fund provides antiretroviral

drugs that stop mothers from passing HIV

to their kids this fantastic news didn’t

happen by itself it was fought for it

was campaign for was innovated for and

this great news gives birth to even more

great news because the historic trend is

this the number of people living in

back-breaking soul-crushing extreme

poverty has declined from 43 percent of

the world’s population in 1990 to 33

percent by 2000 and then to 21 percent

by 2010 give it up for that

hub hub

now the rate still too high still too

many people unnecessarily losing their

lives there’s still work to do but it’s

it’s it’s heart-stopping it’s

mind-blowing stuff and if you live on

less than a dollar 25 a day if you live

in that kind of poverty this is not just

data

this is everything if you’re a parent

who wants the best for your kids and I

am this rapid transition is a route out

of despair and into hope and guess what

if the trajectory continues look where

the amount of people living on a dollar

25 a day gets to by 2030 can’t be true

can it that’s what the data is telling

us if the trajectory continues we get to

wow the the zero zone for number

crunchers like us that is the erogenous

zone and it’s fair to say that I am by

now sexually aroused by the collating of

data so virtual elimination of extreme

poverty as defined by people living in

less than a dollar twenty five cents a

day

adjusted of course for a flashin from a

1990 baseline we do live a good baseline

that’s amazing

now I know that some of you think this

progress is all in Asia or Latin America

or model countries like Brazil and who

doesn’t love a Brazilian model but look

at sub-saharan Africa as a collection of

ten countries some call them the lions

who in the last decade have had a

combination of a hundred percent debt

cancellation a tripling of aid a tenfold

increase in FDI that’s foreign direct

investment which is unlocked a

quadrupling of domestic resources that’s

local money which when spent wisely

that’s good governance good childhood

mortality by a third doubled education

completion rates and they

haved extreme poverty and at this rate

these ten get to zero - so the pride of

lions is the proof of concept there are

all kinds of benefits to this for a

start you won’t have to listen to an

insufferable little jumped-up Jesus like

myself how about that

and twenty twenty eight twenty thirty

it’s just around the corner I mean it’s

about free Rolling Stones farewell

concerts away

I hope I’m hoping makes us look really

young so why aren’t we jumping up and

down about this well the opportunity is

real but so is the Jeopardy we can’t get

this done until we really accept that we

can get this done look at this graph

it’s called inertia it’s how we screw it

up and the next one is really beautiful

it’s called momentum and it’s how we can

bend the arc of history down toward zero

just doing the things that we know work

so inertia versus momentum there is

jeopardy but and of course the closer

you get it gets harder

we know the obstacles that are in our

way right now in difficult times in fact

today in your capital in difficult times

some who mined the nation’s purse want

to cut life-saving programs like the

Global Fund but you can do something

about that you can tell politicians that

these cuts can’t cause lives right now

today in Oslo as it happens oil

companies are fighting to keep secret

their payments to governments for

extracting oil in developing countries

you can do something about that too you

can join the one campaign and leaders

like Mo Ibrahim the telecom entrepreneur

we’re pushing for laws that make sure

that at least some of the wealth under

the ground

and ends up in the hands of the people

living above it and right now we know

that the biggest disease of all is not a

disease it’s corruption but there’s a

vaccine for that - it’s called

transparency open datasets something the

Ted community is really on it daylight

you could call it transparency and

technology is really turbocharging this

it’s getting harder to hide if you’re

doing bad stuff so let me tell you about

the you report some really excited about

it’s 150,000 Millennials all across

Uganda young people armed with 2g phones

an SMS social network exposing

government corruption and demanding to

know what’s in the budget and how their

money is being spent this is exciting

stuff look once you have these tools you

can’t not use them once you have this

knowledge you can’t unknow it you can’t

delete this data from your brain but you

can delete the cliched image of

supplicant impoverished peoples not

taking control of their own lives you

can erase that you really can because

it’s not true anymore

it’s transformational 2030 by 2030

robots not just serving us Guinness but

drinking it by the time we get there

every place with a rough semblance of

governance might actually be you know on

their way so I’m here to guess we’re

here to try and infect you with this

virtuous data based virus the one we

call fact of ism it’s not going to kill

you

in fact it it could save countless lives

I guess we in the one campaign would

love you to be contagious spread it

share it pass it on by doing so you will

join us and countless others in what I

truly believe is the greatest adventure

ever taken the ever demanding journey of

equality could we really be the great

generation that Mandela asked us to be

might we answer that clarion call with

science with reason with facts and dare

I say it

emotions because as is obvious fact of

us have feelings too I’m thinking of

whale Gonen though some of you know him

he set up one of the Facebook groups

behind the Terrier Square in Cairo he

got thrown in jail for it but I have his

his words tattooed on my brain we are

going to win because we don’t understand

politics we are going to win because we

don’t play their dirty games we are

going to win because we don’t have a

party political agenda we are going to

win because the tears that come from our

eyes actually come from our hearts we’re

going to win because we’ve dreams and

we’re willing to stand up for those

dreams whale is right we’re going to win

if we work together as one because the

power of the people is so much stronger

than the people in power

thank you thank you so much