WEF Africa 2010: Q&A with Bongani

Over the next few days we’ll be introducing five Global Changemakers to you – they will be representing the Global Changemakers network and engaged youth at the WEF Africa 2010 in Tanzania.

 

Who are you?
My name is Bongani Ncube; I am a Zimbabwean studying Computer Science in Algeria. I like to think I am a writer and an artist at heart though!

What was your first reaction when you found out you’d been selected for WEF Africa 2010?
When I saw Fran’s letter in my inbox I honestly thought she was just letting all of us know who had been selected for the WEF. I was shocked (really shocked) surprised and strangely humbled, then very very excited; in that order.

What are your hopes and fears for WEF Africa?
My hopes for the WEF are that it will be an eye opener in a big way for me and get me support for our work (it’s difficult working in a foreign country) and that our Ideas Labs sessions will really get the big shots of Africa to see and get involved in what Global Changemakers are doing on the ground. My fear is that it will all end in nothing but talk.

In which area would you want to see more youth engagement?
I would like to see more youth engagement in debating & confronting topical issues affecting their communities and countries, and to see youth contributing to policy making. By this I mean real youth, 16-25 year olds, not what happens in most countries where “Youth Leagues” have 30 year olds in them!

How can you make this happen?
I think I can make this happen by getting those issues out into the open and out of the back of everyone’s mind. We all have an opinion but very few are willing to share until asked, to quote David Molape, “We get what we can, we can all we get and sit on our can!”

What will the world look like in 2050?
2050? The world will be a very different place; by then climate change will have forced the world to take it far more seriously than the occasional protocol and summit. AIDS  will be a thing of the past either because of a cure or behavioural changes in society and the balance of world power will have shifted in (I hope) Africa’s favour. As a computer guy I think computers will have changed our lives in ways that I can’t even begin to imagine right now, good ways I hope.

If you become the new UN General Secretary, what would be the first thing you’d do?
The first thing I would do would as the new UN Secretary General would be to commit almost 100% of the United Nations diplomatic resources to the Israeli-Palestine issue and 100% of its financial resources to developing third world countries from the ground up, that means cutting down on aid to governments and starting to get skills to populations, resources to communities and knowledge to the new generation.

What quality do you like most about yourself?
The thing I like most about myself? Difficult one. Well I like that I’m an open person; open to new ideas and to new people and new experiences.

If you could invite three historical figures for dinner, who would they be, and why?

  • Alexander the Great: to get him to talk about where he got his unrelenting drive and energy to conquer the known world before he was even thirty;
  • Nelson Mandela: to get him to talk about how he got through those 27 years in jail when hope seemed such a distant thing and how he came out of jail without even an ounce of bitterness in him, that I think requires more strength than all the other great things he ever did
  • Albert Einstein: A rare mind that mixed science and wonder in equal measure, I’ve read some of his quotations and I find him absolutely fascinating.

If you bump into Bono or Queen Rania in the elevator, what do you say?
“Hi, I really admire your work and the things you’ve done to change the world but do you know I’m part of this amazing group called Global Changemakers and we’re changing it one step & one community at a time in fact right now we’re….”
Queen Rania is one of the people I would love to invite to Algeria to talk to the youth here as she is an Arab that they can relate to, she has progressive ideas and is a very active social activist in the Middle East.