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