This TED Talk features social entrepreneur Bright Simmons, recorded live at We the Future 2019.

I am an ideas activist. That means I fight for the ideas I believe in to have their place in the sun regardless of which side of

the equator they were born. As well as shoot. I myself, I'm from that part of the world.

Often euphemistically referred to as either the global south or the developing world.

But let's be blunt about it.

When we say those words, what we really mean is the poor world.

Those corners of the world with ready-made containers for the hand-me-down ideas of other places and other people.

But I'm here to depart a little bit from the script

and to try and convince you

that these places are actually alive and bubbling with ideas.

My real issue is where do I even start?

So maybe Egypt, Alexandra, where we meet Rzwan, when he walks outside the Suk, walks into a pharmacy for heart medicine that can prevent the blood in his arteries from clotting, he confronts the fact that despite a growing epidemic that currently accounts for 82% of all deaths in Egypt,

it is the medicines that can address these conditions

that counterfeities, ever the evil geniuses they are, have decided to target.

Counterfeitis, making knock-off medicines.

Luckily, for Rezwan, my team and I, working in partnership with the largest pharmaceutical

company in Africa, have placed unique codes. Think of them like one-time passwords on each

pack of the best-selling heart medicine in Egypt. So when Rezwan buys heart medicine, you can

key in these one-time passwords to a toll-free short code that we've set up on all the telecom companies in Egypt for free.

He gets a message, call it the message of life, which reassures him that this medicine is not one of the 12% of all medicines in Egypt,

that are counterfeit.

From the gorgeous banks of the Nile,

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