It said, Talk Daily, Amelie's hue, teacher strikes, student protests and a lack of basic supplies and technology, that was the reality for East African schools when social entrepreneur Mbenga Sesson grew up in his talk from Ted Zelon, 20 20. He says centuries of wealth inequality is a global epidemic, and he shares the work he's doing to level the playing field in a way that's going beyond just putting computers and apps in the hands of the poor.

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Potential savings will vary, discounts vary and are not available in all states and situations. I once watched this video of a relay race at a primary school in Jamaica, there are two teams, the yellow team and the blue team, and the kids are doing great, working so hard and running so fast.

And the yellow team as the lead until this little boy gets the baton and runs in the wrong direction. My favorite part is when the grown up chases him looking like he's about to pass out, trying to save the situation and get the kid to run in the right direction.

In many ways, that's what it's like for many young people in Africa.

There are many PCs behind their peers on the other side of the inequality divide. And they're also running in the wrong direction because as much as we might wish otherwise and aspire to build economic and social systems away, it's not the case.

Global development is a race, and it's a race that my own country, Nigeria and all continent Africa, are losing. Inequality must be seen as the global epidemic that it is from the boy who can afford to dream because of the disappointment that could come with it to the girl that skipped school in order to sell snacks in traffic just to fund our school fees. It is clear that inequality is at the center of many of the world's problems, affecting not just the bottom 40 percent of us, but everyone.

Young men and women who don't get set on the path of equal opportunities become frustrated and we may not like the choices they make in the attempt to get what they think directly deserve or punish those that they assume keep them away from those better opportunities. But it doesn't have to be this way if we as humanity make different choices, we have the ability we need to fill that opportunity gap, but we just have to prioritize it. I grew up many pieces behind, even though I was a smart kid growing up in a town of 350 kilometres from Lagos.

It felt like a place that was disconnected from the rest of the world and one where hope and dreams were limited. But I wanted to get ahead. And when I saw a computer for the first time in my school, I was spellbound and I knew I just had to get my hands on whatever it was. This was in 1981 and there were only two computers for the entire school of more than five hundred students. So the teacher in charge said computers were not for people like me because I wouldn't understand how to use them.

You would only allow my friend and his two brothers, sons of a professor of computer science, to use it because they already knew what they were doing.

In university, I was so desperate to be around computers that to make sure I had access to the computer lab, I slept there at night even when the campus was closed due to teacher strikes and student protests.

I didn't own a computer until I was gifted one in 2002. But what I lack in devices I made up for in drive and determination.

However, coming out in computer labs in order to teach us of coding isn't a systemic solution. Which is why I started part time initiative to help all Nigerians learn to use technology to help them run faster and further toward their hopes and dreams, and help our nation and take our continent great leaps forward in development, you see, to put it as simply as possible. My goal is for everyone in Africa to become famous.

I don't mean like a celebrity. I mean I want everyone to be like famous. When famous or not. Griffy came to power initiative yet completed high school but couldn't afford college and its options in life were limited. When I got famous recently, about way would have been without our training program. You rolled out a list of cutups, including ending up on the streets, jobless and homeless at a risk of doing things they wouldn't be proud of. But luckily, most came to Padam initiative in 2007 because his friends, who were part of a youth group I told about my plans, kept talking about a free computer training program.

And do any Australian females paid close attention, unexcelled when the United Kingdom trade and investment team at the UK deputy commissioner in Lagos access to recommend a few potential interns were recommended, famous and a few others to be interviewed? You got internship and while there you heard about an entry clearance assistant job and a UK commission in Abuja. He applied, even though without a college degree, no one thought he had a shot.

It was starting behind. But it wasn't a technology that helped him get ahead. It was the extra training training rooted in his community training and understood his context and his challenges, training that helped him change his life for the better.

Formost got a job and then saved enough to pay his way through university famous, a medical chemistry graduate from Delta State University, is now a chartered accountant and an assistant manager with one of the world's big for professional services firms. We have one innovation awards consecutively for the last four years. But let's be clear. The computer didn't do that, we did without that additional training and support, females wouldn't be where it is today.

Fairness is not given everyone a computer and a special program.

Fairness is helping make sure everyone has the same access and training that can help them make use of all this things to improve their lives.

When people are further behind, fairness isn't given everyone the same opportunity to compete.

Fairness is helping those who are behind to get to the same starting line with everyone else and giving them a chance to run their own race in the right direction.

Yet there are millions of young people who have not been as fortunate as females, and I still don't have the skills, let alone the wheel, to face seemingly insurmountable inequality as more workers and students now have to complete tasks or learn from whom this inequality is exponentially pronounced and with dire consequences.

This is why I do what I do through part of the initiative, but just like many intervention programs, there's a limit to how many young people we can reach through our three centers.

We've now taken the training to where the kids are, but public schools are so ill equipped that we have to bring devices access and in many cases we have to provide power supply.

Since 2007, with what we young Nigerians, in order to improve their lives and that of their families, to give just one example or go to Corby's father, kicked her, our sisters and mom out because they preferred to have a son. But when she completed our program, got a job and became the family's breadwinner, a father came clean admitting that it was wrong about WAF of the girl.

In addition to our work at a training centers and in schools, we're not planning to acquire mobile learning units, buses equipped with access, with devices and with power, and that can serve multiple schools.

Yes, we need better access to technology and policies that facilitate open Internet access. Freedom of expression and more. But the best computers in the world could fall in a democratic forest, but no one would have them, let alone use them if they were miles away hauling water from a well or foraging for scrap metal to pay school fees in a school that can't even teach them computer skills, just like the fastest cars in the world, can't help it run a mouse behind everyone else.

I'll never forget being invited back to my high school while I was Nigeria's information technology youth ambassador. It was 10 years after had been denied access to using the computer in that very same school, but yeah, was been introduced as a role model who was supposedly shaped by the same school.

After my presentation, that teacher who said I could never afford not to use computers was quick to grab the microphone and tell everyone that he remembered me as a student and he was sure I had it in me all along.

It was right, it didn't know it at a time, but I did have it in me famous additon, him ogo tulku additon ha the bottom 40 percent of it in them.

Are we going to see the life changing opportunities for people like them, like Vortigern said, or are we going to recognize that centuries of inequality can just be solved by gadgets, but by training and resources that fully level the playing field? Fiennes is not about giving every child a computer and an app.

Fiennes is connecting them to access to training and additional support that they need to take equal advantage of those computers and apps. That's how we pass them the baton and help them catch up and start running in the right direction and change their lives. Thank you. Ted talks daily, is hosted by me, Elise Hu, and produced by Ted, the music is from Allison Layton Brown. In our mixer is Christopher Fazi Bogon.

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