Some people want to paint the town red, Jenny Raharivola wants to paint the island in green. Jenny Raharivola is a young artist specialized in composing and singing for humanitarian and environmental causes. The first time I heard about her was when I first heard the official song for the Vakanala NGO – the warmth of her voice as well as the complexity of the composition bluffed me – she’s only 22 but so talented.

Jenny explained to me that she initially called this song “Vakon’ny ala”, then the Vakanala NGO asked her to allow them to use the song for their cause, though detaching her from the song. The song then got rebaptized “Vakon’Ala”.

update from the artist: This song initially was called “Genesisy” as Jenny started working on it at the age of 11. “Genesisy” because whatever inspired Jenny started back then, and it was also the beginning of her career as a musician. It took 11 years to Jenny to finalize this song and the song got renamed “Vakanala song”. A last renaming was brought to the song, who became “Vakon’Ala” (forest cultivating): the idea is to use that song for any environmental cause – there’s no exclusivity to Vakanala NGO. This also help Jenny and Vakanala go on separate ways as Vakanala NGO only use this song for communication purposes while Jenny is still the owner.

She was a bit stressed as she was to open the ceremony with her show as the beginning of the event got delayed – that wasn’t the best conditions for a first scene (according to her, TEDxAntananarivo was the first time she would actually play in front of an actual public, even though she already played on different occasions for private events) … All I can say is that her show set the tone for TEDxAntananarivo- and Jenny- who played with two backing vocals and one percussionist – did great with her accoustic guitar.

The lyrics of this song are too important that I think you should take some time assimilating it. So here’s a video showing those lyrics (a nice opportunity to enjoy Jenny’s talent too)

One thing’s for sure, she is promised to achieving big goals – and as realistic as she can be, she knows that at some point of time, the show-business will cross her road, she definitely knows that she’s in it for a cause: the humanitarian and environmental cause.

The good thing when attending a presentation from a World Bank representative is that you get to know a lot of macroeconomic figures that help you “appreciate” the environment you’re living in. The TEDxTana wasn’t disappointed on this part, and if you followed twitter #TEDxTana last saturday, you surely have seen a lot of excerpts from Bienvenu Rajaonson figures reported in real-time as he did his show.

There were too much interesting infos to capture during Bienvenu’s presentation, so you’d better pick whatever is interesting for you from his presentation below.

So the point raised by Bienvenu was that there’s a business to be done in ethanoland that this should now be mainstreamed. According to him, there’s 3000 millions MGA to be done in this business and there’s plenty of space for lot of entrepreneurs out there. Anyone wanna take the challenge?

Bio: Bienvenu Rajaonson is the Senior Environmental Specialist of Madagascar World Bank office.

How come such a Malagasy artist who has received a worldwide recognition is barely known by Malagasy? This guy a toured the world with his music, played with the big guys (opend Carlos Santana’s concert in Paris), is a world champion in diatonic tremolo (awarded in Detroit – U.S.A), and has received praise from recognized blues chronicles … but is barely known by its own peers in Madagascar … Typically illustrating the “ny mpaminany tsy masina an-taniny”  (“a prophet has no influence in its own village” – approximative translation, I do admit)

Jean Emilien, born in Fianrantsoa, was initiated to music by his grand-father who was buried with his “Jejy voatavo” an commonly used instrument in this part of Madagascar. He learned playing kabôsy while guarding the zebus. His father, however, didn’t really appreciate him playing music and hardly hit Jean Emilien’s head with his Kabôsy – though Jean Emilien left his father’s house at the age of 17.

Artistically, Jean Emilien didn’t stay long playing occidental and reggae music. He quickly deepen his knowledge of local patrimony, specifically the “vako-drazana”. While different rhythms prevail in Malagasy songs (salegy, jejy, vakisaova, …), Jean Emilien focused on the “rija” – his region’s style. A choice that has paid off, just see by yourself by having a look at Jean Emilien press-book. This guy has impressed the greatest in this world – Hats-off

“ingenuity born of necessity” Erik came up with a long list of different examples of ingenuity coming from Africa: a mobile phone charging system made by a bicycle dynamo, a biogaz system, or a mobile-security system, to name a few.

Erik encourages the attendance to own the Africa narrative: we are the ones who should tell our story and think beyond Madagascar/Africa.

Read more about the full TEDxAntananarivo Talk of Erik here.

Update: Here is the full slide of Erik during TEDxAntananarivo

Bio: Erik Hersman AKA the white african , a Senior TED fellow and on of the high-profile african bloggers is the guy behind afrigadget.com that showcases African creativity and ingeniusity for solving everyday life problems.

He is also the co-founder of ushahidi, which is a free and open source crowdsourcing platform that was initially used during Kenyan post-electoral crisis, and also during Madagascar 2009 crisis. The tool is continuing its spread and has also been used in Chile and Haïti.

As if that wasn’t enough, he also launched Nairobi innovation hub AKA IHub (Madagascar definitely needs to implement such concept so as to get more synergy for the burgeoning ICT sector)

Audrey has presented the youtaa.com project. So it’s presented a facebook-like web platform but designed specifically for businesses. My understanding is that it intends to be an alibaba.com – like but targeting Africa businesses. This platform will be a place for buyers and sellers to deal, or seek for news.

Youtaa.com, with Ashoka implementation are still in preimplementation stage so far. Let’s hope they will move into implementation soon.

Bio: Audrey, born in Réunion island is clearly multicultural. She loves to refer to her mixed origin:  a quarter Indian, a quarter white and the other half being a mix of afro-arab-malagasy blood.

Once specialised in public law, she has experience in law reforms in France and in Argentina. She then took a 180 degree turn whereby she turned to finance as she “at least wanted to create value to the scale of a company”, though she studied in London (where she met Rebecca), then practised in the investment banking field in Madrid, then she accepted a managing director of a data company in Madagascar.

Since her London studies, with Rebecca, they worked on Youtaa, a tool geared at developing Africa

Anja told it herself: she felt like an intruder as everybody was talking about social entrepreneurship while she was about to talk about design, more specifically about the creation-process of a designer. Don’t worry Anja, your franchise during the talk was just refreshing (although telling us that some customers give you a headache when chosing a color is probably a bit awkward). Anyway, now I know how the wall of the Gare of Soarano entry to the first store has been made. Have a look at it if you ever go to this place, she did it. Anyway, TED is also about Design, and you brought that design part of the game.

The interesting thing is that she keeps on reminding us that designers also draw.

Anja BessonRasolondraibe AKA A.B.R isn’t one of those designers that you can classify into one category that fits-it-all. Born in Paris, she attended graphical and object design at the Beaux-Arts in Paris, then went to Milan Naba  Nuova Accademia Di Belle Arti (Naba School) where she acquired deeper knowledge on interior and product design. Inspired by Italy’s artistic culture, she improved her drawing and photography skills under Enzo Mari’s supervision. As if she couldn’t stay too long in one place (she loves travelling), she moves back to Paris and joined Vogue Paris, and Agnes B. Those experiences matured her design skills, but i also lead her to meet her idol: Issey Miyake.

Want to “feel more” about the artist’s coup-de-coeur, visit her blog.

Miora has made a point during her presentation: PAPMAD, the only paper manufacturing specialized on recycling is calling for every unit to provide them with raw material to work with. So far this plant is only working 6 month per year while it produces 3000tons of paper per year. So the message is clear: if you have unused paper, cardboxes: get them to Papmad for them to produce recycled paper.

In fact, since their reopening in 2008, PAPMAD is exclusively working from recycled paper.

Bio: “”You’ve got to change yourself first before aiming to change the world” that’s the (translated) motto of Miora Rajaonary – a malagasy who prides herself from aligning her academical and professional choices with her own convictions. 2007, she got a master on culture and media in Paris, then joined the L’Oréal PArtnership & philantropy division where she took part into the “2008 women in science” program. She then became the marketing executive of Chalhoub group in Dubai. Miora then move back to Madagascar and proudly joined the only recycled paper manufacturer in the indian ocean: PAPMAD – a model for sustainable development according to Miora.

The difficult part about presenting people who work for entities is to find the fine line between the person and what the organisation do.

Alice Plane first: Born in Lille in 1984, she has a lot of interest for Russia (she even attended russian language courses and travelled back-and-forth to Russia). She loves travelling and has already settled in England. Academically, she learnt political science and….trade. All I can say is that she has an eclectic topics of interest.

Ashoka.fr on the other hand is part of the international ashoka.org association who now supports 2000 social entrepreneurs worldwide.It has started in 1981.

Alice now lives in Antananarivo working on pre-implementation of an Ashoka program in Madagascar (Malagasy social entrepreneurs, we need to help her achieve her goal of setting up an ashoka here

Malagasy rural people call their product “tôftôf”, you guessed it, we’re talking about ToughStuff a solar-power device used for lighting and small appliances distributed throughout Madagascar via old 2CV vehicles and bicycles.

I always wondered the reason for the “TOUGH” of this name, well I had my demo when Andrew just standed on one of the toughstuff lamp. As if it wasn’t enough, he threw one of the solar power onto the floor and it didn’t break (was it still working, I don’t know, but I guess he wouldn’t do that kind of demo it wasn’t supposed to work). On one of the video (ok, it’s more an advert), we could even see a child playing with one lamp and using it as a sailboat in the water, a 2CV run on the solar power and a funny passage showed one peasant still saying “still tough0″

Anyway, the toughstuff system is based on three principles:

- don’t give free stuff as people won’t value them

- reduce expenditure

- generate wealth

The toughstuff model is amazing, as there are almost 1.5 billion people in the world that can benefit from such solution.

BTW, if you ever have the chance to talk to Andrew Tanswell, don’t refer to the people constituing his segment market as “the base of the pyramid”:he hates it

Bio:Andrew Tanswell is the CEO of ToughStuff. A british citizen, he’s been working in the change management and in strategic positions for business extension  . He then opened his consulting niche-focused company for public and commercial clients. Andrew Tanswell has huge experience in international aid therough the Swiss Aid Agency Medair. He is a Global Social Benefit Incubator 2009 alumni. Andrew Tanswell is an experienced entrepreneur for start-up or buy-out and is passionate about the role of entrepreneurship for alleviating poverty.

“60 000 tortoises are consumed by local and international market every year in Madagascar. This endemic specie will disappear in 20 years if nothing is done about it. ”

Sadly, this kind of alert is “common” for a lot of species in Madagascar. You just replace tortoise with another species, then the “deadline” is always alarming

The picture on the left shows how the tortoise market is structured in the south-south-east of Madagascar

Personally, I wasn’t even aware that the sokeka tortoise is endemic to Madagascar, to the spiny south-south-west region of Madagascar. I’ m so used to finding them in the garden of acquintances who fed them with lettuce. I didn’t even know that the sokeka meat are mostly eaten by fellow people in toliara, fort Dauphin, antananarivo during the easter, christmas or new year’s eve.

The local customs do not help too preserving those sokeka as they have a ” negative fady” which dictates the Mahafaly and the antandroy not to touch the sokeka.

A lot of challenges are ahead because it is estimated that if the consumption rate of Sokake stays the way it is now, the 3.5 million sokeka in Madagascar will all disappear in 50 years .

Please find below the french version of the WWF program aimed at preserving those tortoises

Then here is the english shorter version