With conference in Mogadishu, TEDx is officially everywhere

There’s no doubt the city is improving, and thousands of Somalis are returning home to open businesses, invest, and move their country forward.

Yet given Somalia’s unpredictability, any optimism must be measured. There hasn’t been a functioning government in decades, and things can change quickly. The day after The New York Times published a feature chronicling a “Taste of Hope in Somalia’s Battered Capital,” the newly reopened National Theater was attacked by a suicide bomber, killing 10, wounding dozens, and delivering a significant emotional blow to the city’s “rebirthing.” 

While TEDx is being held in a secure location in Mogadishu at an address given only to participants, it is also being live streamed on the Web.

The conference is hosting a wide range of speakers from Mogadishu’s “higher society”  – a chef, real estate developer, university founder, camel farmer, healthcare specialist, and journalist, are among those offering 15-minute talks in hopes of inspiring a nation. The only voices missing are perhaps the ones who control the throttle on the rest of society: pirates, politicians, extremists, and warlords, who often one and the same.

The organizers, like Liban Egal, a Somali emigrant to America who recently returned to found the First Somali Bank, the first commercial bank in the city since the country spiraled into chaos 21 years ago, are energized. “Just having this event is a success, no matter how the speakers or the audience turns out,” he says in an interview with the Monitor.

Clash of civilizations

Yet it’s hard to ignore the evident clash of civilizations. While TEDx exemplifies and promotes a world of optimism, embracing the limitless possibilities of technology, innovation, and inspiration to improve our world, one can only note that these things have been seemingly absent in Somalia.

For many Somalis, optimism is hoping there’s enough food to feed your family. There is barely enough infrastructure to power much in the way of technological advancements, and innovation is typically not a venture-backed effort to improve society, but a crudely hacked necessity to survive.

In fact, given the longstanding absence of a central bank, Mogadishu’s booming black market economy is probably the greatest sea of innovation in the country. But it’s likely you won’t find those innovators giving a TED Talk.

When explaining TEDxMogadishu, Liban says “surprise” is the most common response he receives. Somalia has offered the world no shortage of “surprises” over the years, yet more often then not they haven’t been pleasant ones. TEDx’s arrival in town – simply the fact that it can happen – shows that perhaps a “Rebirth” isn’t as far fetched as it may seem, and the tides may really, finally, be ebbing in Somalia’s favor.

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