TEDGlobal 2007: Session 12: Noah Samara

Noah Samara is a pioneer in satellite radio. Growing up, I saw many people battered by numerous problems, but there has always been hope. He is impassioned about empowering people with information. Because of HIV/AIDS, 17 million people would die by the end of the decade in 1990s would die and simply because of a lack of information. This prediction was made in the late 1980s.

Since nobody was doing anything, he decided to build his satellite radio station. His wife said Once you’re finished, go and get yourself a real job. It was a daunting task because it had not been done before to allow a satellite to broadcast to terrestrial radio. A 131 countries allocated frequencies. By 1996, $1.1 billion was raised. And for the first time, technology was launched in Africa before it was handed down to America.

Some of the programming includes daily soap operas, weather information and other types of information that are locally relevant. About 90% of funds are raised inside Africa. Some young people, children of refugees, were interviewed. It was a goosebumps moment when they heard themselves on the radio from Cape to Cairo the next day. So the question is now, how do we scale this impact from anecdotal stories like that of William, who built a windmill to serve his family’s energy needs? How much of the positive force created by the TEDGlobal conference can be unleashed?

For more, please read the Noah Samara page on Wikipedia and also visit the Worldpace radio website.