“Statisticians are kind of bewildered by this,” but…”extreme poverty” — that is, the number of people around the world living on less than $1.25 a day, counting inflation — is “on a trend line to vanish” by 2028, according to Bono at a TED2013 talk in Long Beach.
Bono cites factors such as the drop in price of AIDS drugs, an increase in government transparency that allows aid money to get where it’s supposed to go (“it’s harder to hide if you’re doing bad stuff”), and technology in Africa that may yet “leapfrog the laptop.”
Read the full blog from TED2013 here for more about the talk. I’ll just leave you with Bono’s ending quote:
“We’re going to win because we don’t understand politics. We’re going to win because we don’t play their dirty games. We’re going to win because we don’t have an agenda. We’re going to win because the tears that comes from our eyes actually come from our hearts. We’re going to win because we have dreams. We’re going to win because we are willing to stand up for our dreams.”
Do you agree with Bono? Leave your thoughts in the comments below!
Bono, musician and activist, at TED2013: The Young, The Wise, The Undiscovered. Tuesday, February 26, 2013, Long Beach, CA. Photo: James Duncan Davidson
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