It's a pleasure for me to be here with you today. A month ago, I was in my  homeland of Rwanda, and today I have the joy of being with all of you here  today. And so the topic I want to share with you for the minutes we have is  reimagining the world from scarcity to prosperity. We've had wonderful talks all  morning and early afternoon. We've been inspired. We've been brought to  places of reflection, deep reflection, and I want to continue this journey with all  of you, and think, what would the world be like if we went from scarcity to  prosperity for all? This is a picture. It's the only picture I have of myself with one  Gary Matai, and it was taken five years ago here at Concordia, because the  students of Concordia University invited Nobel winner Wangari Maathai from  Kenya to come here and share her story of how she helped plant a billion trees  in the world. And what was powerful for me was I met her, we talked, we  planned on keeping in touch, but sadly she died before we were able to do any  work together, but it's thanks to the students here that are organizing this TED  event today, and the students who five years ago organized the event that  brought her here that I'm very very proud to be here with all of you today.  Another wonderful, amazing, transformational African leader, Nelson Mandela  left us many, many quotes, and here's one that I'd like to share with you today.  Poverty is not an accident, like slavery, an upper tide. It is man-made and can  be removed. And what's needed for it to be removed? Eric Kaku, a dear friend of mine who spent some time here in Montreal at ASHRACE before going back to  Africa. He's from Ivory Coast, and he wrote a wonderful book called  Entrepreneurial Solutions for Prosperity. And Eric has taught me a lot, and he  shared with me a presentation that he did that gave me one piece of data that  was surprising for me, as an African woman who'd studied agriculture, with a  PhD from a faculty of agriculture and environment. And he said, 60 percent of  the arable land in the world that's uncultivated is in Africa. But at the same time,  images, messages, what we hear is that Africa is one of the most food insecure  continents on the planet. What is this contradiction, and how can we move  forward and allow this to change? One of the realities of some of the land that's  uncultivated, but is arable, is in areas where conflict happens, and when conflict  happens, the Earth is often left to itself. And what happens when we are not able to take care of the Earth is we lose topsoil every year. 24 billion tons of Earth  have been lost. Some of it is due to erosion. Some of it is due to overgracing,  pollution, natural disasters. And every time we lose Earth, we lose capacity to do many things. This is what flooding and erosion looks like in Rwanda. So the  reality is, this was a road, so there's no transportation. This is a water stream  that long time ago was clear, and it isn't anymore. So the aquaculture that was  present, the life that was present in the water stream, disappears when the  water becomes turbid. But at the same time, our capacity to produce  hydroelectric power, whether it's microhydro or hydro at a larger level, is highly  impeded by turbid water and soil going into our water streams. So when 

transportation is limited, what happens? Goods, people can't be transported. So  this affects the whole economy. And what else does it do? One of the important  things that really matter to me and is affected by the loss of soil is that  smallholder farmers who depend on that soil to produce food to feed their  families and income from the sale of some of what they are able to produce is  limited and sometimes completely disappears when soil is lost, and what that  does is that not only affects their capacity to feed their children today, but it also  affects their capacity to send their children to school, and so it affects the quality  of education of our future. Leaders in Africa, but reclaiming land is possible  when soil is covered with grasses, with shrubs, with trees. Soil is stabilized, and  we don't lose that soil. So my dream one day is that all the streams of Africa will  be as clear as this beautiful stream in Hawaii, this is a picture of the border  between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. You might notice that one side, the  Haitian side, lacks the greenery that we see on the Dominican Republic side,  and this clearly is the result of deforestation on one side, policies that have  encouraged reforestation or kept forest in the ground, but also energy policies  that have encouraged the Dominican Republic to use non-fuel-based energy  sources. But it's also historical, socio-economical. It's a lot of things, and the  reality is there isn't one factor that determines deforestation. And Haiti today has a policy where the environment, economy, education are all priorities, and they  hope to move these forward to ensure a more resilient, sustainable country.  Callusos Juma, a dear colleague at Harvard University, shared this information  recently on a leadership dialog, and he said, in 2012, six African countries  elected engineers as presidents. Why is this irrelevant? Well, the reality is,  Africans want to join the knowledge economy, and the knowledge economy is  important. And the way we need to move knowledge economies forward is  having leaders who have an interest in knowledge, in science, and technology,  in connectivity, and how we allow that to happen. And the more African leaders  are aware of all those tools, the more we can have those tools accessed  accessed by the poorest, so they can also have more opportunities to connect  with all of us around the world. So this is a picture of 10 apps, and these were  the top 10 agricultural apps produced for African farmers, and these were  presented at ICD for Agriculture, a conference that was held in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, in November of last year. Why do those apps matter? Because  those apps allow knowledge to be accessed by farmers in rural, remote areas,  so they can be connected to information around climate, around selling their  seeds, selling their crops, accessing added value chains, so that they can add  value to the produces that they have, access information that may allow them to  get financial support for the work that they're doing, and so it connects them to  the world. And the more connected to the world they are, the more they move  from scarcity to prosperity. I've been involved in research in Rwanda, and I've  also been dialoguing with researchers in South Africa, in D.R. Congo, in 

Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, other parts of Africa, and one of my interests is what  do the smallholder farmers see as their challenges, and what do they see as  their solutions? Because ultimately, it's really what can we do to help them be  more connected. This is a picture I took last year visiting a community health  center in Rwanda, and this woman, who's a nutritionist, where families who have issues around malnutrition can come and talk to her. What she's showing is a  diverse diet. What a diverse diet looks like, and what I found really powerful  about these community health centers-they also had community gardens, where people who didn't have any access to land could come and plant and see what  to grow, and were able to actually have some of their own produces being grown there, and what's really interesting to me is that 60% of the calories consumed  around the world come from four crops: rice, potatoes, wheat, and corn. But the  reality, if we want to keep soil stable in Africa, what we need, we need more of  these little leafy greens, and they can come from grasses, they can come from  shrubs, they can come from trees. One example that is actually from India,  moringa, the moringa tree. It can be grown as a tree, it can be grown as a shrub, and the leaves are rich in vitamins. They're rich in protein. They're rich in iron.  They have a lot of nutrients, and the tree's nitrogen fixing, so it actually adds  nutrients to the soil. And there are about 10,000 different indigenous crops in the developing world that are climate resistant, that have resistance to drought, to  flooding, that if they were intercropped with some of those crops that are most  present in terms of the calorie count that we have, these would help ensure food security and nutrition of local populations, as well as diversifying and increasing  their incomes. Another part of this equation around our soil, this is a picture I  took in September, visiting a group of women in Haiti, in a peri-urban area, and  they were all testing improved cookstoves, and these improved cookstoves used about 30 percent less charcoal than their traditional cookstoves. What that  translated as is they were using less of their family's income for energy for food  cooking, and also that was this decreasing pressure on deforestation. So it's not  only in the rural areas that this network is; it's everywhere, and so I see these  women as innovators because they are excited to test these different improved  cookstoves, and they are having a dialog around them. And then we all stood up and danced and sang and felt connected. And the more connection we feel, the  more we work together, and the more trust we have in terms of sharing. This is a picture of Rwanda, of south part of Rwanda, Nyungwe Forest, which is a  wonderful, beautiful virgin forest in Rwanda. And what it also shows is a tea  plantation that's terraced. So terraces help limit erosion, and you might notice  also that along the terraces there are some trees, and so those trees also  further limit erosion. And so my dream is that we're able to find that balance  between environmental biodiversity conservation and producing the crops, the  export crops or local food crops that we require to grow our economies, because our leaders need both. They need to have a growing economy so that they can 

put back funds for education, for health, for everything that is important to us,  but at the same time, areas like this, like Nyungwe Forest in Rwanda, Nyungwe  Forest is responsible for 70% of the water sources in Rwanda, and one of the  sources of the Niles goes to the Nyungwe Forest area, and so this has effect  beyond Rwanda. So what I see is that there are five stages we can work with,  and these five stages can help us reimagine scarcity to prosperity. And so the  first level, I would like us to dream and commit to connect smallholder farmers to all the networks that can help them move from scarcity to prosperity, and I want  this network to nurture nurture ecosystems in urban and rural areas that will help grow this connection and help grow farmers' access to knowledge that connects  them to the local and global economies, because the more of this we have, the  more farmers you can help here. You can donate money on Kiva to help a  farmer in Rwanda or Kenya or elsewhere, and be an investor, social investor.  And so there's so many ways for us, whether we're here in Montreal at  Concordia, whether I'm a leader in Senegal, and I'm trying to think of what  financial incentives I need to give farmers, or what level of interest rates I could  have so that farmers have access to credit, or how can I make really clean seed  available so they can increase their production with high-quality seeds, and so  as we nurture these ecosystems, and as we share, and listen and learn from  each other, we can align a vision that includes partnerships from the bottom of  the pyramid to the top of the pyramid, and cultivate networks that will allow all of  us to have opportunities, and opportunity is what we all want. Opportunity is the  opposite of poverty, and the more opportunity we create, the more prosperity we can have while nurturing our planet. The other side of this. Why is soil so  important? Rich soils contain microorganisms, and these microorganisms have  a lot of power. Some of them can fix nitrogen to allow improved soil quality.  Some of them can produce medicine. Ivermectin is a very powerful drug that's  used to treat parasitic diseases that affect about a billion people around the  world. River blindness is one of these diseases, and so destroyed soils means  the absence of medicines that can cure diseases that affect Our populations,  and why is this important? I'm a scientist. I have a PhD in molecular genetics, an undergraduate degree in agriculture. These spheres represent the knowledge  that we can gain from synthetic, so what we can produce in the lab in terms of  chemicals. But the whole cube is the biodiversity in nature that we're unable to  replicate. So the more biodiversity we can keep, the more able we are to have  microorganisms that can help us nurture the soil and can help us heal diseases.  And for me, some of this connected in about 2006-2007, Tim Geary here is the  director of the Institute of Peristology, and Tim and I had one conversation that  led to emails that led to this whole network meeting two years ago in Botswana,  and we've all been working together, looking at how African biodiversity can  produce new drugs for Africa. So, in closing, I would like to share a quote from  Wangari Maathai. So, Wangari says, "I profoundly appreciated the wisdom of my

people and how generations of women had passed on to their daughters the  cultural tradition of leaving the fig trees in place. People in that region, had been  spared landslides as the strong roots of the fig trees held the soil together in the  steep mountains. They also had abundant clean water, but by the early 1970s,  landslides were becoming common, and sources of clean water for drinking  were becoming scarce. And so, I would like to, for all of us to keep Wangari  Maathai in mind, and also she mentions mothers and daughters. My daughter's  sitting here, and so it's a pleasure for me to be talking in her presence. And this  is a picture of my mother who died nine years ago, and my mother was the first  person who really taught me how to connect with the soil. And what she taught  me is that we put back in the soil, and that the knowledge we have to take care  of the soil is also the knowledge we have to transmit to future generations. So  my dream is that we can continue to connect the poorest to the people with the  most knowledge, with the most power, most leadership, and everybody in  between for a more prosperous, sustainable planet. Thank you very much. 



Last modified: Monday, September 28, 2026, 8:38 AM