Name: 【TED】Chika Ezeanya-Esiobu: How Africa can use its traditional knowledge to make progress (How Africa can use its traditional knowledge to make progress | Chika Ezeanya-Esiobu)
Uploaded: 2017-10-31T13:15:13.000Z
Duration: 14 min 10 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Some months back, I was visiting this East African city,

Basic passive voice

Adverbs of manner

And this vendor suddenly approaches my window

I took a quick look at the alphabet sheet,

how it would be nice to spread it on the floor

So the traffic moved a bit, and I quickly grabbed a copy,

When I had time to fully open the alphabet sheet

I knew I was not going to use that to teach my daughter.

Looking at the alphabet sheet reminded me of the fact

Some decades back, I was taught out of a similar alphabet sheet.

And because of that, I struggled for years.

I struggled to reconcile my reality with the formal education I received

I looked at my ancestry, I looked at my lineage with disrespect.

I had very little patience for what my life had to offer around me.

"A is for apple" is for that child in that part of the world

who goes to the grocery store with her mom and sees red,

green, yellow -- apples of all shapes and colors and sizes.

And so, introducing education to this child

fulfills one of the major functions of education,

to an appreciation of the learner's environment

and a curiosity to explore more in order to add value.

I could get some yellowish apples with brown dots, you know,

signifying thousands of miles traveled -- warehouses storing --

cassava fufu or ugali would not regularly feature

apples didn't count as part of my reality.

introducing education to me with "A is for apple,"

a phenomenon for which I would have to constantly and perpetually seek

for me to make progress within it and with it.

That was tough for a child; it would be tough for anyone.

As I grew up and I advanced academically,

my reality was further separated from my education.

that the Scottish explorer Mungo Park discovered the Niger River.

quite close to the edge of the Niger River.

And it took someone to travel thousands of miles from Europe

to discover a river right under their nose?

Playing board games, roasting fresh yams,

I mean, I just knew my education was preparing me to go somewhere else

and practice and give to another environment that it belonged to.

It was not for my environment, where and when I grew up.

all through the time I studied in Africa.

It took a lot of experiences and some studies

for me to begin to have a change of mindset.

I will share a couple of the remarkable ones with us.

I was in the United States in Washington, DC

and I got this consultancy position with the World Bank Africa Region.

my boss -- we were having a conversation on some project,

and he mentioned a particular World Bank project,

a large-scale irrigation project that cost millions of dollars

He said this project wasn't so sustainable,

【TED】Chika Ezeanya-Esiobu: How Africa can use its traditional knowledge to make progress (How Africa can use its traditional knowledge to make progress | Chika Ezeanya-Esiobu)

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【TED】Chika Ezeanya-Esiobu: How Africa can use its traditional knowledge to make progress (How Africa can use its traditional knowledge to make progress | Chika Ezeanya-Esiobu)

authentic

struggle

tough

technique