are friends so forgive me if I am a bit
slope here’s one thing I know for sure
that every mother deserves a chance to
watch her kid grow it has been the facts
that has sort of pushed me in the
direction of what I do today and I
really believe that birth the process of
giving birth and of raising children
should be a happy event for a mother and
the idea that thousands and thousands of
women in our continent do not get the
chance to watch their children grow
affects me in a deep way it is a
personal thing it’s almost like a
personal affront I don’t know where it
comes from but I’m going to try to make
sense of it through this talk today
nothing about where I was born could
have predicted that I will be in front
of you today to tell you this story i
was born in a very small southwestern
city town actually in nigeria it’s
called alar ago even Nigerians don’t
know about it hahaha so I was born in
Ellora goo and raised by two teachers
the fact of their life was that they
needed to ensure that your children were
educated probably like all your parents
they worked so hard they gave up so much
sometimes they even gave up their
personal dignity just to ensure that
these children they had were well
educated when I was about 14 and a
series of a pee accident sort of brings
me here
today the first accident of my life was
that I was born and raised by such
amazing people the second was when I was
14 my mother literally won the lottery
they put so the earliest days had this
program when you put a bunch of names
together and then they pick one and they
give you a green card and an opportunity
to bring your family to the United
States my mother want that and that gave
me an opportunity to get educated and so
sort of know more about the world sign
lived in the US I went to high school I
went to college I went to graduate
school and I really really enjoyed my
time and then there was what i called
the dark years like almost like quite a
lot of first-generation african children
in the west and in know where my place
was in the world I didn’t know if I was
Nigerian I know if I was American in a
way I should leave while I grow up what
walk I should do so there was about two
years of me just struggling seriously
about my place in the world I found
Nelson Mandela’s autobiography and what
I got from nelson mandela’s life was a
sense of duty to your community and to
your people and that um duty is not easy
it doesn’t look like a superhero movie
where you found out you’re supposed to
do something and then you do it and
everyone claps for you and it’s perfect
I love those movies but that the sense
of work what it takes to actually bring
your vision to reality is work and it’s
hard hard work its work emotionally it’s
work financially it’s work physically
and that it just takes a lot so I needed
that I needed to do something called my
duty but what’s it my duty so I shall a
traveling I got an opportunity to work
in northern Nigeria so I stayed between
Abuja Connick kaduna in jigawa so I was
just traveling around
that part of the world and the next
accident of my life happened there in a
small town in southwestern Cano I met a
young girl called Aisha now Aisha when I
met her was in labor and she had been in
libel as they told us for three days so
what’s interesting about Aisha story was
not that there’s a high maternal
maternal mortality rates in Nigeria
54,000 women died every year in
childbirth at a time so that was not
interested that I’ve had the fact that
aieshia was going to be one of the sacks
statistics one of those women who died
was not what was most interesting about
our story what was most interesting was
that she wasn’t a victim she wasn’t a
victim she was waiting for someone to
help she was helping herself she was
struggling she held on in pain as a
mother myself I know she she held on for
three days just waiting she was waiting
for someone to come and help to just
give her a hand and create the
infrastructure she needed to get a
halftime a Aisha she’s achieved
thankfully but a lot of times when you
have these talks like this you will the
person would say time a Aisha I went
back to the continent i Bude enemies and
health system I saved 1 million people
and everything was great but that’s not
what happened for me I didn’t want this
work I didn’t want to do it and what I
found out was that your story only
actually makes sense in and inside that
it’s not a linear thing that sometimes
you go back sometimes you go forward
sometimes it will pause take a
roundabout to come back to what your
vision and what your life’s work is such
how would I went to Geneva lived there
for a while East Africa I
how would I childhood to me I was
waiting something something else needed
to happen to push me to do this work and
I need as a sort of fine if personal
affinity to the work that I feel like I
have been called to do and then I became
a mother myself so try this process it
was extremely difficult I had a very
long label I almost died my child almost
died but what was so interesting about
it was so different from Aisha story and
mine and draw the label I actually
thought about her was that I had access
to excellent health care I didn’t have
to wait for three days to get the simple
surgery I needed and that that simple
fact saved my life in my child’s life so
I knew I had to do something I came back
home and launched something called life
bank so light bank is a company using
technology to build a new infrastructure
for the health system we build apps and
we use automated intelligence artificial
intelligence we use data to figure out
whoo-hoo need certain things who need
blood which patients will need plasma
which patient would need platelets which
patient will need oxygen and we figure
this thing out and give the probability
into the hands of the healthcare
provider and then other thing is we move
what they need to the hospital on time
I’ll tell you a story about how a
personal story of how this company is
doing amazing things in the continent a
young mother a few days before I came
for this for TEDx was in label and she
so she had given birth and they didn’t
know that she was bleeding and in the
first place fast-paced health system in
Nigeria particularly were in the rest of
the continent often they’re not actually
paying
attention like the way they should so
she had been reading for quite a while
so she adds about 30 minutes left so the
code or somebody had heard of our life
bank on Twitter the sensors a message
can you help and were able to move the
blood she leader to her within 25
minutes so that’s that’s so a life was
saved now like bong doesn’t really
always save mothers we you know work
with everybody but a story like that
about something that I started sort of
got me to think about Aisha in my story
and the story of mothers across the
continent and that’s what we’re doing I
believe that every single African this
is deserves access to the best the most
efficient was effective health care that
we can divert them and that’s my life’s
work now before i leave you i would say
something as an American and as a
Nigerian there is something that is
going on in the world west the Western
world is getting there moving towards
isolation and less open they’re less
liberal then they used to be and what
that tells me is that there is an
urgency a great urgency for us to make a
continent I won’t say great again but to
make our continent work to make it work
for the vulnerable for the week for the
mothers for the children for all the
Ayesha’s in our continent thank
[Applause]
you [Music]