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Chris Anderson asked me if I could put the last 25 years

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of anti-poverty campaigning into 10 minutes for TED.

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That's an Englishman asking an Irishman to be succinct.

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(Laughter)

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I said, "Chris, that would take a miracle."

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He said, "Bono, wouldn't that be a good use of your messianic complex?"

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So, yeah.

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Then I thought, let's go even further than 25 years.

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Let's go back before Christ, three millennia,

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to a time when, at least in my head, the journey for justice,

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the march against inequality and poverty really began.

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Three thousand years ago,

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civilization just getting started on the banks of the Nile,

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some slaves, Jewish shepherds in this instance,

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smelling of sheep shit, I guess,

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proclaimed to the Pharaoh, sitting high on his throne,

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"We, your majesty-ness, are equal to you."

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And the Pharaoh replies, "Oh, no.

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You, your miserableness, have got to be kidding."

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And they say, "No, no, that's what it says here

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in our holy book."

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Cut to our century, same country, same pyramids,

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another people spreading the same idea

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of equality with a different book.

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This time it's called the Facebook.

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Crowds are gathered in Tahrir Square.

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They turn a social network from virtual to actual,

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and kind of rebooted the 21st century.

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Not to undersell how messy and ugly

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the aftermath of the Arab Spring has been,

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neither to oversell the role of technology,

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but these things have given a sense of what's possible

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when the age-old model of power, the pyramid,

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gets turned upside down, putting the people on top

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and the pharaohs of today on the bottom, as it were.

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It's also shown us that something as powerful

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as information and the sharing of it can challenge inequality,

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because facts, like people,

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want to be free, and when they're free,

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liberty is usually around the corner,

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even for the poorest of the poor --

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facts that can challenge cynicism

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and the apathy that leads to inertia,

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facts that tell us what's working and,

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more importantly, what's not, so we can fix it,

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facts that if we hear them and heed them could help us

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meet the challenge that Nelson Mandela made

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back in 2005,

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when he asked us to be that great generation

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that overcomes that most awful offense to humanity,

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extreme poverty,

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facts that build a powerful momentum.

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So I thought, forget the rock opera,

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forget the bombast, my usual tricks.

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The only thing singing today would be the facts,

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for I have truly embraced by inner nerd.

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So exit the rock star.

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Enter the evidence-based activist, the factivist.

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Because what the facts are telling us

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is that the long, slow journey,

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humanity's long, slow journey of equality,

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is actually speeding up.

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Look at what's been achieved.

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Look at the pictures these data sets print.

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Since the year 2000, since the turn of the millennium,

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there are eight million more AIDS patients

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getting life-saving antiretroviral drugs.

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Malaria: There are eight countries in sub-Saharan Africa

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that have their death rates cut by 75 percent.

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For kids under five, child mortality, kids under five,

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it's down by 2.65 million a year.

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That's a rate of 7,256 children's lives saved each day.

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Wow. Wow. (Applause)

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Let's just stop for a second, actually, and think about that.

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Have you read anything anywhere in the last week

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that is remotely as important as that number? Wow.

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Great news. It drives me nuts

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that most people don't seem to know this news.

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Seven thousand kids a day. Here's two of them.

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This is Michael and Benedicta,

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and they're alive thanks in large part

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to Dr. Patricia Asamoah -- she's amazing --

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and the Global Fund, which all of you financially support,

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whether you know it or not.

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And the Global Fund provides antiretroviral drugs

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that stop mothers from passing HIV to their kids.

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This fantastic news didn't happen by itself.

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It was fought for, it was campaigned for,

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it was innovated for.

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And this great news gives birth to even more great news,

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because the historic trend is this.

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The number of people living in back-breaking,

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soul-crushing extreme poverty has declined

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from 43 percent of the world's population in 1990

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to 33 percent by 2000

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and then to 21 percent by 2010.

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Give it up for that. (Applause)

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Halved. Halved.

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Now, the rate is still too high -- still too many people

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unnecessarily losing their lives.

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There's still work to do.

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But it's heart-stopping. It's mind-blowing stuff.

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And if you live on less than $1.25 a day,

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if you live in that kind of poverty,

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this is not just data.

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This is everything.

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If you're a parent who wants the best for your kids -- and I am --

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this rapid transition is a route out of despair and into hope.

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And guess what? If the trajectory continues,

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look where the amount of people living on $1.25 a day

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gets to by 2030.

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Can't be true, can it?

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That's what the data is telling us. If the trajectory continues,

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we get to, wow, the zero zone.

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For number-crunchers like us,

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that is the erogenous zone,

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and it's fair to say that I am, by now,

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sexually aroused by the collating of data.

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So virtual elimination of extreme poverty,

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as defined by people living on less than $1.25 a day,

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adjusted, of course, for inflation from a 1990 baseline.

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We do love a good baseline.

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That's amazing.

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Now I know that some of you think this progress

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is all in Asia or Latin America or

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model countries like Brazil --

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and who doesn't love a Brazilian model? --

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but look at sub-Saharan Africa.

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There's a collection of 10 countries, some call them the lions,

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who in the last decade have had a combination

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of 100 percent debt cancellation,

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a tripling of aid, a tenfold increase in FDI --

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that's foreign direct investment --

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which has unlocked a quadrupling of domestic resources -- that's local money --

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which, when spent wisely -- that's good governance --

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cut childhood mortality by a third,

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doubled education completion rates,

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and they, too, halved extreme poverty,

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and at this rate, these 10 get to zero too.

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So the pride of lions

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is the proof of concept.

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There are all kinds of benefits to this.

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For a start, you won't have to listen

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to an insufferable little jumped-up Jesus like myself.

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How about that? (Applause)

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And 2028, 2030? It's just around the corner.

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I mean, it's about three Rolling Stones farewell concerts away.

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(Laughter) I hope. I'm hoping.

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Makes us look really young.

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So why aren't we jumping up and down about this?

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Well, the opportunity is real, but so is the jeopardy.

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We can't get this done until we really accept

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that we can get this done.

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Look at this graph.

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It's called inertia. It's how we screw it up.

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And the next one is really beautiful.

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It's called momentum.

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And it's how we can bend the arc of history

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down towards zero,

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just doing the things that we know work.

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So inertia versus momentum.

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There is jeopardy, and of course,

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the closer you get, it gets harder.

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We know the obstacles that are in our way

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right now, in difficult times.

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In fact, today in your capital, in difficult times,

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some who mind the nation's purse want to cut

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life-saving programs like the Global Fund.

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But you can do something about that.

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You can tell politicians

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that these cuts [can cost] lives.

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Right now today, in Oslo as it happens,

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oil companies are fighting to keep secret

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their payments to governments

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for extracting oil in developing countries.

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You can do something about that too.

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You can join the One Campaign,

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and leaders like Mo Ibrahim, the telecom entrepreneur.

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We're pushing for laws that make sure that at least some

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of the wealth under the ground

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ends up in the hands of the people living above it.

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And right now, we know

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that the biggest disease of all

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is not a disease. It's corruption.

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But there's a vaccine for that too.

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It's called transparency, open data sets,

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something the TED community is really on it.

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Daylight, you could call it, transparency.

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And technology is really turbocharging this.

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It's getting harder to hide if you're doing bad stuff.

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So let me tell you about the U-report,

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which I'm really excited about. It's 150,000 millennials

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all across Uganda, young people

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armed with 2G phones, an SMS social network

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exposing government corruption

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and demanding to know what's in the budget

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and how their money is being spent.

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This is exciting stuff.

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Look, once you have these tools,

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you can't not use them.

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Once you have this knowledge, you can't un-know it.

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You can't delete this data from your brain,

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but you can delete the cliched image

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of supplicant, impoverished peoples

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not taking control of their own lives.

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You can erase that, you really can,

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because it's not true anymore. (Applause)

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It's transformational.

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2030? By 2030, robots,

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not just serving us Guinness, but drinking it.

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By the time we get there,

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every place with a rough semblance of governance

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might actually be on their way.

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So I'm here to -- I guess we're here

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to try and infect you with this virtuous, data-based virus,

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the one we call factivism.

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It's not going to kill you.

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In fact, it could save countless lives.

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I guess we in the One Campaign would love you

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to be contagious, spread it, share it, pass it on.

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By doing so, you will join us and countless others

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in what I truly believe is the greatest adventure ever taken,

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the ever-demanding journey of equality.

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Could we really be the great generation

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that Mandela asked us to be?

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Might we answer that clarion call with science,

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with reason, with facts,

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and, dare I say it, emotions?

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Because as is obvious, factivists have feelings too.

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I'm thinking of Wael Ghonim, though.

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Some of you know him. He set up one of the Facebook groups

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behind the Tahrir Square in Cairo.

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He got thrown in jail for it,

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but I have his words tattooed on my brain.

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"We are going to win because we don't understand politics.

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We are going to win because we don't play their dirty games.

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We are going to win because we don't have a party political agenda.

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We are going to win because the tears

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that come from our eyes actually come from our hearts.

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We are going to win because we have dreams,

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and we're willing to stand up for those dreams."

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Wael is right.

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We're going to win

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if we work together as one,

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because the power of the people

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is so much stronger than the people in power.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)

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Thank you so much. (Applause)