Speakers

Novelist Abdulrazak Gurnah was born in 1948 on the island of Zanzibar off the coast of East Africa. He came to Britain as a student in 1968. He is on the advisory board of the journal Wasafiri and lives in…

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka is Former Executive Director of UN Women & Deputy President of SA Founder of Umlambo Foundation Gender Activist and Campaigner for Universal Access to Education. She was sworn into office on 19 August 2013 and brings a wealth…

Dr. David Moinina Sengeh is the Minister of Basic and Senior Secondary Education and Chief Innovation Officer for the Directorate of Science, Technology, and Innovation of the Government of Sierra Leone. He is a senior TED Fellow. He also launched…

Wole Soyinka is a Nigerian playwright, poet, author, teacher and political activist. He was born in Abeokuta, Nigeria, in 1934.  In 1986, the playwright and political activist became the first African to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. He dedicated…

Emir Of Kano Nigeria’s former Central Banker, the Emir is one of the continent’s leading thinkers on economic and social transformation, and a radical voice for Africa’s renaissance.

Author of The Coming Plague & Global Health Analyst Laurie is a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer on public health, and author of the best-selling book The Coming Plague. Laurie’s reporting on the outbreak of the Ebola epidemic in Congo in 1995…